Challengers made statehouse incumbents work in south Georgia

Hardly-funded insurgents led by Haley Shank put a scare into turncoat south Georgia statehouse incumbents. What would happen with well-funded candidates?

As we’ve already seen, in new district 177 Dexter Sharper (D) won 2 to 1 over opponent J. Glenn Gregory (R). (All election data in this post is from GA Secretary of State.)

Conversely, Jason Shaw (R-176) ran unopposed, perhaps because he is the least offensive of the incumbents (he voted against HB 1162 that put the Atlanta-power-grab “charter school” amendment on the ballot, although he did vote for HB 797 that will funnel more of your local tax dollars to charter schools imposed by Atlanta even if your school board doesn’t want them).

Other south Georgia statehouse incumbents, all Republicans, had challengers, all Democrats. All the challengers opposed Amendment 1. Haley Shank did best, in District 173 against Darlene K. Taylor, 8,324 to 12,048 (40.86% to 59.14%).

Next was Teresa Lawrence against Ellis Black (Turncoat-174), with 5,050 to 11,500 (30.51% to 69.49%).

Finally among statehouse insurgents, J.C. Cunningham opposed Amy Carter (Turncoat-175), getting 6,573 to 15,732 (29.47% to 70.53%).

And for State Senate, Bikram Mohanty opposed Tim Golden (Turncoat-8), getting 21,998 to 36,287 (37.74% to 62.26%). Golden apparently felt the heat, since he retaliated against criticism of his voting record with a personal attack on his opponent.

In that attack he made the mistake of misusing LAKE materials, resulting in legal action by LAKE (covered as news by WCTV) and a LAKE TV ad in the same WALB market as Golden’s attack ad. Maybe Golden should be more careful how he treats constituents.

All of Black, Carter, and Golden voted for both HB 1162 and HB 797, and all three ran two years ago as Democrats and a few weeks later switched to be Republicans, as WALB reminded us:

This is the first time Tim Golden has run as a Republican. He switched parties after he was re-elected two years ago. Mohanty is the Democratic nominee.

That’s how they earned the party label Turncoat: from DINO to RINO. The turncoats have just seen they can’t run without opposition.

Voters who voted for the incumbents: remember the only one of four political forums in Lowndes County the incumbents showed up for was the one run by the Chamber of Commerce, in which no questions were asked of the candidates (and Black didn’t even bother to show up to that one). You may ask yourself: who do the incumbent turncoats represent? Apparently not you, the voters.

So far as I know, only Mohanty among the challengers had significant funding. Imagine what a well-funded insurgent could do!

-jsq