 | |
 | |
 | |
|
| ||||||
|
 |
 Email news alerts Search restaurants
   
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
|
 |
|
SPECIAL ELECTION: Four to choose from
Tuesday in Senate District 48 Voters have a wide range of choices in Tuesday's special state Senate election. The four-man field in Senate District 48, which covers north-central Gwinnett and parts of Forsyth and Fulton counties, includes two conservative Republicans. One has served in the state House, and the other has run the day-to-day operations of the state GOP. There's a Democrat who says he can deliver more to the district because his party controls the Legislature. And there's a mortgage banker with no party affiliation who has ideas on helping the elderly. The candidates --- Bobby Reese, David Shafer, J.D. Elliott and Nathan Warnock --- are seeking to replace Billy Ray, who resigned last month after being named to a Gwinnett Superior Court judgeship. Polls are open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. The race probably will be decided in Gwinnett, where voters in 49 precincts participate. In Forsyth and Fulton combined, only 20 precincts will be open. All the candidates appeared at a forum Thursday night sponsored by the Hamilton Mill Community Association. The hopefuls stuck mostly to the issues, but, at one point, Reese and Shafer traded accusations about campaign literature. Reese, a Sugar Hill Republican elected to the state House in 1998, said he's running on his record of tax relief. Noting that the winner of the special election will join the Senate immediately, Reese is stressing that he's the only candidate with state legislative experience. "I'm the only one who knows what the heck is going on," said Reese, a 47-year-old real estate agent. He said he resigned his House seat because he believes Republicans are close to capturing a Senate majority, and he wants to be a part of it. Shafer, 36, has extensive political experience, despite never having held elective office. He served as executive director of the state GOP in the early 1990s and was the Republican candidate for secretary of state in 1996. The owner of a corporate public relations firm, Shafer has focused his campaign on fighting over- development. The Duluth resident is proposing that a quarter-mill in property taxes each county sends to the state remain in the counties and be allocated to buy green space. It's critical "to try to do something to slow down the development that I think threatens our quality of life," Shafer said. Elliott, 45, a communications consultant from Duluth who also ran for the Senate in 1996, portrayed his Democratic affiliation as an asset in the heavily Republican district. Democrats will control the Legislature for at least five more years, he said, and the district could get more than the "crumbs" it has received if it had a Democratic senator. "I believe this community needs a Democrat plugged into the statehouse," he said. Elliott described himself as a fiscal conservative who would challenge Democratic leadership when necessary. He said he has refused all contributions from developers and road contractors to protest the "excess" of campaign money. Warnock, 45, a mortgage banker from Buford, said he decided to make his first run for office after watching his mother struggle to survive on $310 a month in Social Security. He thinks the state should help the elderly pay for prescription drugs, and to eliminate property and sales taxes for senior adults. "They've done enough," Warnock said. "They've supported us. It's time we support them." A high school dropout who earned a GED and a college degree, Warnock wants to raise the minimum dropout age from 16 to 18. "Maybe those kids will say, 'I've got to be here anyway. Let's make the best of it,'" he said. Tuesday's winner could be sworn in as early as Wednesday. If no
candidate receives more than 50 percent of the vote, a runoff would be
held March 5. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| home | news | news | metro | sports | business | living | opinion  By using AccessAtlanta.com you accept the terms of our Visitor Agreement. Please read it. Questions about your privacy? See our updated Privacy Statement. Interested in reprint permission? See our Permissions Policy. © 2002 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution |
