The Primaries

"The Primaries" essentially meant Republican primary races here in Georgia.   There are some terrific Democratic candidates running, but for the most part, the races with strong candidates (Michelle Nunn, Jason Carter) had only token opposition and won easily by huge margins.    

In most of the down-ballot races, with multiple candidates, I did not know anything about the candidates on which to choose.  State School Superintendent was the prime example.    Especially after the 2012 way Republicans sneaked in a charter school amendment that gave state office holders a strong voice in creating charter schools (over-riding local school board decisions), this should have been an important race.    But I had little information to go on.

Perhaps I had failed to pay attention, if the AJC wrote much about the candidates.   But I'm afraid they continued the unfortunate Democratic practice of focusing on the big offices and hot contests -- leaving the savvy tea party to build up a grass roots infrastructure at the lower levels.

Results were not unexpected:    Nunn and Carter easily won their races.    So did Nathan Deal.   Nunn's Republican opponent will be decided in July run-off between businessman David Purdue and congressman Jack Kingston, probably the two least extreme conservatives in the seven-person race.   You couldn't call any of the Republican candidates moderate.    Bottom line:    these are the two who would likely be the biggest challenge to Michelle Nunn, and probably Purdue more than Kingston because of his "newcomer" status.  He has never before run for public office.

One small side benefit:    Paul Braun had to give up his House seat to run for the Senate, and he lost.   So, at least for a while, we'll be spared the embarrassment of having him held up on national tv news as the epitome of nutty extremist congressman from Georgia.

Ralph