Most of area’s state delegation had easy time at polls

Published 9:59 pm Saturday, July 29, 2006

It may not be over until it’s over. But some political races are pretty much over.

For instance, only one member of Whitfield County’s delegation to the General Assembly faces a challenger on the November ballot.

Rep. Ron Forster, R-Ringgold, whose District 3 includes parts of western and southern Whitfield County, will meet Democrat Jeannie Babb Taylor.

But Rep. Roger Williams, R-Dalton, Rep. Tom Dickson, R-Cohutta, and Sen. Don Thomas, R-Dalton, face no opposition. None of them faced any opposition in the July primary, either.

Thomas says he’ll still be doing plenty of campaigning, just not for himself.

“I’ll be very interested in and actively involved in campaigning for the election of Gov. Sonny Perdue and the election of (state) Sen. Casey Cagle as lieutenant governor,” he said.

“I’m also supporting Bill Stephens for secretary of state in the runoff and, hopefully, in the general election,” he said.

Thomas says he’ll also be supporting several fellow Republican members of the Senate in their campaigns as well.

Dickson says that, while he won’t be campaigning, he’ll still be out talking to voters.

“I plan to be at events and do those sort of things to keep in touch,” he said.

He also says he’ll be preparing for next year’s legislative session.

Dickson chairs a study committee looking at reporting requirements for local school systems, for instance.

“We’re looking at things in the legal code that require reports from school systems that are no longer needed or no longer valuable,” he said.

Reducing some of that paperwork could ease the burden on both teachers and administrators, he says.

Williams said his schedule probably won’t be much different than it would be if he had an opponent this fall. He will still be handling requests from constituents and going to various meetings with state and local officials and others.

“I’m certainly not going into seclusion. In fact, I’m going to a Department of Transportation informational meeting in Cartersville today,” he said Thursday.

Williams says there are some issues that most members expect will come up in the next legislative session, and he will be gathering more information on those.

“I’ve talked about a constitutional amendment to make sure that House districts are single-member districts. That’s something that I think people have pretty well said they want. They don’t want multi-member districts,” he said.

The House currently has no multi-member districts, but it has in the recent past.

For Thomas, this is a familiar position. He also ran unopposed two years ago. But it’s a first for both Williams and for Dickson, who was first elected two years ago.

“I certainly don’t want to brag about it, but I think that I’ve won with a pretty good majority every time I’ve run. And I feel like I’ve done what the people sent me down there to do,” Williams said.

Thomas said he believes that’s true of all of the Whitfield delegation.

“We are all conservative Republicans, and our beliefs and our votes come down the way people want us to vote. On the immigration issue, on same sex marriage and just about every issue we have voted on, I feel that probably some 70 percent of the people and more in some instances agree with us,” he said.

One longtime observer of Whitfield County politics says the lack of competition shows just how dominant the Republican Party has become in the area.

“When I came here in 1967, it was the exact opposite. The Republicans often had no candidates or marginal candidates,” said Dalton City Council member Terry Christie.

Christie, a former political science professor at Dalton State College, said the popularity of former President Ronald Reagan and the increasing strength of the Republican Party at the national level eventually worked its way down to the state and local level in Georgia.

Whitfield County Democratic Party chairman Gandi Vaughn did not immediately return a telephone message left at his office Friday.