Political Notes

Join The Crowd: Honk if you’re not running for governor this year. As of April 30, 14 candidates had qualified, seven as Democrats and seven as Republicans. Ray Boyd, who refused to take a loyalty oath to the state GOP,…

Good Stewards: The Water Stewardship Act of 2010, passed by the General Assembly, has won praise from the Georgia Conservancy and the Georgia Chamber of Commerce. The measure, says the conservancy’s president Pierre Howard, former lieutenant governor, “is the most…

That old gang of mine: Georgia’s seven Republican congressmen were long known as “G-7,” one of the most conservative groups in the U.S. House, but the old gang is breaking up. Rep. John Linder of Gwinnett County announced he won’t…

Amburn in charge: House Speaker David Ralston picked Spiro Amburn, previously the legislative affairs director for the Georgia Department of Juvenile Justice, as his chief of staff. Amburn earlier was Gov. Sonny Perdue’s deputy legislative affairs director. “Spiro is not…

Not since the days of the WPA and the CCC has the landscape been this bleak for working people in Georgia. The state’s unemployment rate inched above 10 percent in June and has been hovering around that double-digit level ever…

Appointments: Gov. Sonny Perdue has appointed Shawn LaGrua to another judicial branch job. Perdue named LaGrua solicitor general for the DeKalb County State Court in 2004, but when she ran for a full term as a Repub-lican in 2006 she…

Chicago newsman Finley Peter Dunne has been dead for more than 70 years, but the phrase he coined still gives us the best analysis of the upcoming election year in Georgia: Politics ain’t beanbag. No, politics is not for the…

Howard award: This year’s winner of the Rock Howard Award from the state Board of Natural Resources will be Reid Harris, a retired attorney from St. Simons Island who sponsored one of the state’s most important environmental laws, the Coastal…