By Elliott Brack
Editor and publisher, GwinnettForum
MAY 25, 2018 | It’s been quite intoxicating for me as several readers questioned why GwinnettForum did not give some facts and guidance on the races for governor in the primaries.
One person said: “You told us of your choices for every race around except the governor. And we don’t have on your site any information from the gubernatorial candidates. Why is that?”
We now recognize that was a shortcoming of ours. The reason that you didn’t see information in the governor’s race is that our thinking was that it was the one political battle where the voters knew a good deal about the candidates. Therefore, our thought was to concentrate on the lower ticket races, where most people knew less about the candidates. We concentrated our efforts with candidates in races from lieutenant governor on down.
Well, we were wrong. We should at least have given some guidance and allowed the candidates for governor to speak directly to the voters by answering questions we should have proposed to them. While there may not be enough time for us to do this in the run-off, we’ll certainly ask the two major candidates for governor for their input in GwinnettForum in the General Election.
Our apologies.
A MAJOR VICTORY for the people of Gwinnett this election season was the high quality of people seeking the many offices on the ballot.
Time after time, in both parties, we found solid, principled and competent people wanting to become public servants, in the many races. That made us proud, and you should be proud, too. The candidates are beginning to reflect the diversity in Gwinnett.
The upshot is that it means that those elected from all sectors of the population should become good public servants, responsible to the people, and in the long run, we can hope, we will have better government. What more can you want from an election?
Granted, not all the candidates chose to spend 30 minutes with GwinnettForum. We regret that they did not all take advantage of this opportunity. For those who did not choose to come see us, we simply disregarded their candidacy, and hope if they ever run again, we might get to meet and know something about them to pass on to our readers.
NEVER HAS Gwinnett County had a person from this county who became governor.
While Zell Miller had a second home in Norcross when he became governor, his main home remained in Young Harris.
The only other closest to a local governor we have had in recent years was that former Gov. George Busbee, who chose to live in Gwinnett after he left office. He and his wife are also buried here.
The best chance for a person from Gwinnett to become governor rests now on the shoulders of Sen. David Shafer, who came within 1.4 percent of winning the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor. He faces a runoff to win that post. Should he eventually win the run-off and the General Election, he would be in a good position to become Gwinnett’s first sitting governor.
THE MAJOR UPSET in Gwinnett in the Democratic primary was the defeat of Sen. Curt Thompson for the 5th District Senate seat. Sheikh Rahman, a native of Bangladesh who now lives in Lawrenceville, thoroughly trounced Thompson, by a vote of 4,002 to 1,885, and won outright victory, since there was no GOP opponent.
Those candidates who made the runoff now have two months to politic before the July 24 runoff election.
- Have a comment? Send to: elliott@brack.net
Follow Us