The candidates Dade elects to the Georgia House of Representatives' District 1 seat have a reputation for forgetting all about the county once they hit Atlanta. This year's crop, judging by their performance at the May 14 debates sponsored by local station KWN and hosted by the Dade County Public Library, seem to have a head start.
(Photo: John Deffenbaugh made a rare appearance at a Dade County Commission meeting in 2019 just prior to announcing his candidacy.)
There are three candidates vying on the Republican ticket this year for the District 1 House seat, which represents all of Dade and part of Walker County: John Deffenbaugh of Lookout Mountain, who was elected to the seat in 2012 and held it until he was ousted by Colton Moore two years ago; Vikki Mills, also of Lookout Mountain; and Mike Cameron of Rossville.
All of them seemed a little hazy and wrong-footed on Dade turf, even Deffenbaugh, who'd represented the place for six years. Or perhaps Deffenbaugh, in his two-year involuntary hiatus from the job, had just gotten out of the habit of politicking. In any case, he often seemed quavering or absent-minded in his answers, as uncertain here at the center of the universe as the others.
Asked a question that invited them to criticize how the COVID-19 pandemic had been handled, Vikki Mills (right) groped for a local connection--hadn't there been "some people" in Dade who had been "a little ill?" She appeared to be remembering, or not, a news story that week about most of the Dade County Commission having been diagnosed with antibodies for the deadly virus, signifying they'd had it earlier in the year.
Then, asked whether they would support funding for tornado shelters, none of the candidates seemed to realize Dade has in fact had three in the works from FEMA since the county got creamed in 2011 by three tornadoes on the same day--not even Deffenbaugh, who was Dade's voice in the statehouse for most of the intervening years (but who was never famous for attending county commission meetings in any of them).
"Part of our responsibility is to help the community any way we can," Deffenbaugh answered the shelter question, in part. "That doesn't mean every time they ask for money they're going to get it."
"I would support shelters," said Mike Cameron (left). "I think we also need to pray." (Cameron used the word "pray" and related forms--i.e., "prayerful"--multiple times during the May 14 debate.)
In a perfect world, said Vikki Mills, if there were plenty of money, everybody would have a storm shelter. In this imperfect one, though: "It's just not practical to build a bunch of storm shelters." She would support an early warning system, though, she said.
In fact, Dade Emergency Services Director Alex Case informed the county commission at its January 2018 meeting that the tornado shelters were--finally--on the way after the original 2013 grant application for them had been denied. The county had requested four shelters and had been granted three. Each is projected to cost $425,000, with $318,750 of that, or 75 percent, being picked up by the feds. Of the remaining $106,250 per shelter that Dade is required to pay in matching share, a good amount of it should be satisfied in-kind by using county labor to clear the land, dig footers and lay foundations, Case told the commission.
More recently, on April 22, when the county had to interrupt its daily information sessions on the COVID-19 crisis with daily information sessions on the massive cleanup following the Easter tornado, Case, who is also the mayor of Trenton, answered a question about why Dade still had no tornado shelters: "We've got the RFP nearly done."
(Parenthetically, candidates for county offices had to answer a question at the May 14 debates about whether county employees should be allowed to hold other local positions, which seemed aimed specifically at Alex Case's situation, and none of them seemed inclined to connect the 2011 tornadoes, the "nearly-done" RFP nine years later and Alex Case spreading himself a little too thin. But then they weren't the ones waiting patiently for arrest reports from the Dade Sheriff's Office since February and being told that their absence was a computer glitch that Case had promised to get to next, but Alex is a little busy.)
(Also parenthetically, no one in any case tried to unseat Case in last year's mayoral election.)
(One final parenthetical: Dade does have the Hyper-Reach early warning system, plus emergency warning broadcast towers locally called sireens, the first of which was installed behind the Justice Building in December 2016.)
But back to the state representative debate: Candidates were also asked a question about whether if elected they would be prepared to pass new laws in response to requests from constitutents.
"We work for the people," said Cameron.
"I didn't quite follow what was going on," said Ms. Mills. Then, when the question was repeated: "Absolutely."
"If there's a law requested from any constituent that has any vadlidy, I would look at it," said Deffenbaugh. That had actually happened during his term, he mentioned, concerning a law requiring CPR training in schools, which had been requested by a Dade citizen. But then he diluted the force of the local connection with a hesitant: "I think that's right, isn't it?"
(It was right. Retired public health nurse Verenice Hawkins of Rising Fawn had led a decades-long crusade to require the lifesaving method be taught at Dade High School, and she was finally successful in 2013, during Deffenbaugh's tenure.)
A related question informed the candidates that if elected they would be asked to take referendum requests--say, from the school board--to the state legislature, and asked if they would allow the voters to have their say.
"If one or two people on the school board want it, maybe not," said Deffenbaugh. "But that's a rarity." The significance of the question seemed to be that Deffenbaugh had actually been asked during his tenure by the then-Dade school board to take a referendum about reforming the "65-5" school tax exemption to the legislature and had declined. Colton Moore, running against him in 2018, made reforming 65/5 part of his campaign platform and enlisted the support of the school system but, once victorious, dropped the board of ed flat at the first sign of resistance.
Mike Cameron was able to use the question to point out that he'd help lead Walker County's recent efforts to get a referendum approved by the legislature allowing residents to vote on whether to change from its sole-commissioner form of government. "We moved forward and got it done," said Cameron.
"I would not stand in their way," said Vikki Mills. "I would help them any way I can."
The afore-mentioned question about COVID-19 allowed Cameron to sound moderate--"I think it's easy to be a backseat driver"; Deffenbaugh to sound experienced--"When I left in 2019, we had $3 billion in rainy-day fund. That now is being used where if we didn't have that we would be in really bad shape"; and Ms. Mills to sound strident: "Are you kidding me?" she asked. "I don't think it's in our best interest to shut down a whole country for one little virus." And: "It was overhyped and overdone." We will not even know COVID-19 is around in a month, Ms. Mills, a registered nurse, assured us.
A question about the Second Amendment had the three Repuclicans aiming to outgun each other on who was the most pro-right-to-bear-arms. Cameron actually said, "Guns do not kill people, people kill people"; "I will protect your rights," promised Ms. Mills; and John Deffenbaugh pointed out it was he, as a proven pro-gun legislator, who had received the coveted NRA endorsement.
Similarly, the three did some wrestling to establish who was the most anti-abortion-rights. "We ought to just not have any abortions," said Deffenbaugh. Life starts at conception and any interference is murder, declared Ms. Mills. "Holy Scripture says that God knew us in the womb," said Cameron, prayerfully, then went on to discuss a movement requiring that patients--"these girls," as Ms. Mills termed them--who have taken the so-called abortion pill be informed that there is now an antidote.
[The "abortion pill" is a nonsurgical procedure, a combination of drugs that can be used early in a pregnancy to block the hormone progesterone and break down the lining of the uterus, without which gestation cannot continue. The "antidote" is a flood of progesterone.]
Connected to that theme--what Ms. Mills called "our values"--was her call to "get rid of Hollywood," referring to Georgia's hard-won status as a place where movies get made. Hollywood had been getting money from Georgia for 10 years, she said, then got huffy about Georgia's heartbeat legislation. Why not give them the shove? "I don't want them there," she said.
Ms. Mills had brought forward her boot-Hollywood proposal as a possible state budget cut, but Deffenbaugh pointed out, "Since that [Georgia's economic development incentives to movie producers, presumably] was introduced, there's been a plus flow of money to the state."
"We need to look at how we can make government smaller and more efficient," said Cameron about cutting the budget.
And Deffenbaugh warned: "You've got to be careful where you start cutting." Education was 90 percent of the state's budget, he said, and the schools always put up a huge fight when their funding was cut.
Well, if pinch came to shove, asked another question, would you reduce services or raise taxes? "There's no right answer," wailed Ms. Mills, though declaring she wasn't a person who wanted to raise taxes.
"You can't cut much from education," said Deffenbaugh, and it's also tough to cut--there was a terrible pause while he was unable to remember the word "Medicaid." It's a difficult course, he said, and: "Whoever's in office is going to have to have some history behind them."
"I would not raise taxes," said Cameron. He would look for ways to save money and leverage technology to do things more efficiently. "You've got to look at every nook and every cranny," he opined.
Asked about the legalization of marijuana, Deffenbaugh said he'd voted for its medical use in children having multiple seizures and couldn't see the harm in it. It needs more studies, he pronounced.
Cameron was against legalization "under any circunstances." Ms. Mills said as a nurse she'd seen people respond well to medical marijuana treatment and had used CBD herself. "I think that a lot of people on the road being drunk is a bigger problem," she said.
In his closing summation, Mike Cameron said, "We are facing tough times" and we need to elect seasoned, prayerful people capable of making unpopular decisions. He had been chairman of the local Republican party and had received his seasoning in the 2018 campaign season, when Stacey Abrams was "doing everthing she could" to be governor. "One of my proudest things it to see her not called 'Governor Stacey Abrams,'" he said.
"I'm a Trump girl," said Vikki Mills in her own closing remarks. It's important to keep fighting the "evil socialists" and the Democrats who are "trying to destroy democracy," she said, and she's the woman to do it becase as a nurse, "I made life and death decisions on a daily basis."
Ms. Mills may have been unaware that all Dade Countians who wish to help choose their county leaders must vote in the Republican primary this year, even democracy-destroying Democrats, there being no candidates running as Democrats locally. John Deffenbaugh remembered that, even if he'd forgotten about Medicaid, Verenice Hawkins and the tornado shelters:
"I support both parties," said Deffenbaugh. "I think we need to work with both sides of the aisle, and I have done that over and over and over again." He had even served on a committee that Stacey Abrams had chaired, he pointed out, and lived to tell the tale. "Every man is my superior because I can learn from him," he said. Thus evoking his six years of experience on the job, Deffenbaugh asked for another term, saying: "I have the desire to serve and I have the experience to serve."
The Planet will continue this series of debate coverage--virtually the only politicking the candidates had a chance to do in Dade county during this epidemic-shutdown year--later in the week. The general primary is, again, June 9, and early voting has already started at the Dade Administrative Building.
