National Guard general: Gov. Sonny Perdue has promoted Col. Joseph M. Wells to Brigadier General in the Georgia Army National Guard, making Wells the first African American general officer in the 276-year history of the Georgia National Guard. “With his…
One of the hallmarks of Gov. Sonny Perdue’s administration has been his consistent cutbacks in state formula funding for Georgia’s public school systems. In nearly every budget he’s proposed since first taking office, Perdue has included large “austerity cuts” in…
Forming their teams: Insurance Commissioner John Oxendine, who’s putting together a campaign team for the 2010 governor’s race, has named AFLAC CEO Dan Amos as his finance chairman. Bill Byrne, former Cobb County Commission chairman and an unsuccessful GOP candidate…
We now know what happens when push meets squeeze. As the economic recession deepened in the last six months of 2008, Georgia’s political leaders found themselves squeezed by dropping tax revenues at the same time they were being pushed by…
Making changes: For the first time in six years, a new president pro tem will lead the state Senate when the General Assembly convenes a new session this month. Sen. Eric Johnson (R-Savannah) stepped down after six years in the…
For a while there, Zell Miller had quite a career going as the last angry man of Southern politics. In the fall of 2003, as he was preparing to step down from his seat in the U.S. Senate, you could…
Executive appointments: Gov. Sonny Perdue named Cumming developer Mike Evans, a former House member from Forsyth County who once chaired the State Transportation Board, to the Board of Community Affairs. Evans stepped down from his seat on the Transportation Board…
On a night when the rest of America was saying “Yes, we can!” to the notion of electing a black man as president, voters in Georgia defiantly replied, “No, we won’t!” The election of Barack Obama as the country’s first…
Over and back: Gov. Sonny Perdue was criticized in some quarters for flying to Spain on an industry-hunting junket while a gasoline shortage was making life miserable for people living in metro Atlanta and north Georgia, but his trip shouldn’t…
I don’t know that there has ever been a Georgia politician who has provided more surprises over the years than Angela Elizabeth Speir, who will soon be stepping down as a member of the Public Service Commission. She came out…
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