Thursday, August 10, 2006

Run-Off Results

The Run-off was pretty good overall. I'm only sad that my friend Allen Thornell did not win his race for State House.

LT. GOV: Jim Martin (62.4%)
SEC. OF STATE: Gail Buckner (55.2%)
CONGRESS, DIST 4: Hank Johnson (58.8%)
STATE HOUSE 58: Robbin Shipp (53.5%)
STATE HOUSE 59: Margaret Kaiser (53.5%)
DEKALB SOLICITOR GEN.: Robert James (56%)

Of course, I couldn't vote in the 4th District race or the State House 58 or 59 races. Otherwise, my choices all won. I was thrilled that Jim Martin not only beat but PULVERIZED his Smurfiness, Greg Hecht. The way Greg ran his smear campaign against Jim was shameful, and I'm glad that the Democratic party voters came out and said in a loud voice they would not tolerate that kind of behavior.

I sincerely hope that this is not the end of Allen Thornell's electoral career. He ran a great campaign, raised a ton of money, and came close to winning in a majority black district. The fact remains though that he did not win solely because of his skin color, and that's a shame. His opponent ran solely on the fact that she was black, and it worked. I predict, though, that if she doesn't change her tune, the rapidly gentrifying district will dump her in 2008. The days of making class and race appeals and winning on that argument alone seem to be dwindling.

Hopefully they will be gone for good before long.

1 comment:

Button Gwinnett said...

I'm glad to see Jim Martin win as well. If he can support civil unions and run successfully as a statewide candidate, it will dispell the previous mindset that has allowed Dems an excuse to not support us.

From the sounds of things, we can look for more of Allen Thornell. He's an impressive candidate. Just like Karla Drenner, he's far from just being the "gay candidate." He has lots of good things to say on a variety of issues like healthcare and the environment.