GA-6 Special Election Enters Early Voting Stage; And A Note About Our Coverage

Voters in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District (North Fulton, North DeKalb, East Cobb) can go to the polls as early as today through their county’s early voting procedures. The April 18th special election features 18 candidates, who are identified by party but running all on the same ballot. Presuming no one gets 50% plus one vote or more, there will be a runoff on June 20th between the top two vote getters.

Ok, and with that news placeholder out of the way, a couple of housekeeping notes. This is the time slot where I normally post my weekly column. My print outlets will be running a version of Jon Richards’ obituary that I posted here yesterday. I’ll use this time/space instead for a personal Publisher’s note about our coverage of the GA-6 race.

Jon was our Editor in Chief, and he assumed that title and I took the Publisher title when we created GeorgiaPol for a reason. My focus has now shifted to policy, and most of my writings are of the Op-Ed/persuasion variety. I write because I have opinions. And they are just that.

One of Jon’s goals, in all of his political activities here and well beyond, was “fairness”. He had opinions, but they didn’t manifest themselves as an agenda on the pages of GeorgiaPol.com. Among his many duties was to ensure we had balance in our coverage and diversity of ideas from our base of contributors. In theory this would have freed me up to get back to having my own opinions, separate from the body of work demonstrated on this site.

Because of the aggressive nature of Jon’s disease, not only was Jon not able to cover the legislature this year nor the Special election now underway in GA-6, but I have been significantly less engaged as normal. Lawton Sack has taken the lead in being the neutral party in reporting that race for us. He’s a former GOP District Chair, and lives a couple hundred miles from the district.

We have 20 contributors at last count, representing both major parties and an independent or two. Each and any may opine on this race and any other as they choose. As such, there are many points of contact to pitch a GA-6 story, or any other.

I’m well aware of the moniker the old site received of “HandelPundit”. I was perhaps too self-conscious about in during her 2014 race that I’m not sure I did all I could to help out a good and loyal friend when I could have and when she needed it. I’ve felt guilty about that every since.

I’ve had almost zero time to devote to this race thus far, and frankly, I hope to minimize my writing about campaigns going forward. But I’m also not going to tie my own hands and not write about a race I have a personal interest in order to appease a few folks who wish to complain that because I’m not supporting their candidate, I’m not being “fair”. I have neither the time nor patience to try to appease anyone making this argument, and I will not.

I, personally, support Karen Handel in the race to succeed Tom Price. “GeorgiaPol.com” does not have a preferred candidate nor an agenda to promote any particular candidate. Each individual contributor is expected to call it as they see it. In our world, that’s the only way we have available to us to be “fair”.

I take great pride in the mix of our contributors and their commitment to bring their personal views to this site, whether they agree with mine or not.  I will continue to bring my own views to the mix as I see fit. One of those that I feel quite strongly about is that I believe Karen Handel will make a great member of Congress.  I look forward to having the time to support her, in any way that I can.