The U.S. Capitol building in Washington DC.
Mark Wilson/Getty Images

By Stephanie Ramage and Chuck Stanley

From June 29 through July 2, The Sunday Paper interviewed the five Democratic Senate candidates who will slug it out in the July 15 primary race for a spot on their party’s November general election ballot. We also interviewed the lone Libertarian candidate and the man all six of them hope to unseat—Republican incumbent Sen. Saxby Chambliss—who gave us a surprising revelation about Iraq.

The Democratic challengers

Josh Lanier, June 29, 6:30 p.m.

Photo by Spencer A. Freeman

“Here’s the problem with health care,” says Josh Lanier, as he puts a pepper shaker down on the red-and-white checkered tablecloth at Dusty’s Barbecue. He holds a knife to the right of the pepper shaker and his cell phone on its left.

“This is you,” he says, indicating the knife. “This is health care,” he gestures with the phone.

“And that is the insurance business,” he says with a nod at the shaker. “It’s between you and your health care. People complain about the government dispensing health care, but it already does it. The overhead for Medicare is only 1.7 percent of its whole budget. The Social Security Administration spits out millions of checks every 30 days and they don’t often go wrong. … It’s special interests that have kept us from having a national health care plan for this long.”

His position on Iraq?

“Most civilians don’t realize the magnitude of the American military. It is an awesome power, and there is much more to it than soldiers. We have materiel there, we have infrastructure, we have support people, it’s a lot to move out, and it doesn’t just happen overnight. My point is this: We don’t have to tell people when we’re leaving. We don’t have to broadcast it or signal it.”

After serving in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War, Lanier joined the staff of Sen. Herman E. Talmadge (D-Ga.). After that, he worked in leadership positions throughout Washington’s lobbying community: for the National Cable Television Association, the Manufactured Housing Institute, the Shellfish Institute and the National Insulation Certification Institute.

     “I’m kind of like the drug addict or the guy who’s been in prison who travels around to schools saying ‘Don’t do what I did,’” says Lanier, who’s now a writer. “I’ve seen how it works and that’s why I’m not accepting any PAC [political action committee] money.”

His campaign finance plan is to gather as many individual contributions as possible, mostly through word of mouth. His plan for America’s finances is to lighten the load for people willing to invest in innovation—particularly energy innovation.

“If you have invested in a start-up, and it’s a real investment, say 20 percent of the money that you have is invested in it, then your capital gains tax should be zero. That’s the thing. There are inventors and innovators who are starving for investors, and we need to give those investors an incentive to find those innovators.”—SR

Vernon Jones, June 30, 11:30 a.m.Photo by Jeannie Williamceau

“I’m waiting for Alicia Keys,” Vernon Jones says, and I can almost hear the grin spreading across his face through my cell phone. I feel like a nosy neighbor asking a grown man why he hasn’t found a nice girl to settle down with. But any time I look for information on Vernon Jones, there’s a blog entry speculating about why the 47-year-old DeKalb County CEO remains single.

“Me being single has nothing to do with building libraries … and improving the quality of life in DeKalb County,” he says. “Saxby Chambliss is married, but our men and women are still in Iraq. Saxby Chambliss is married, but he voted for an unbalanced budget. Saxby Chambliss is married, but he won’t vote to give children better access to health care, even in his home town of Moultrie, Ga. How can a married man do that?”

Jones describes himself as a conservative Democrat in the mold of Sam Nunn. According to Jones, this means a fiscally conservative focus, an emphasis on strong defense and a hard line on gay marriage and immigration. Jones points to his experience working with the Department of Housing and Urban Development to slow the effects of America’s housing and foreclosure crisis in DeKalb County as evidence of his readiness to represent the state of Georgia in the U.S. Senate. He also notes his work with Jacoby Energy to convert methane gas from the Live Oak Landfill into energy as an example of his commitment to alternative energy solutions.

 In his excitement to make a point, Jones can seem aggressive, and perhaps this has fueled perceptions that he is ill-tempered. Allegations involving trespass, assault and rape have all been leveled against Jones and withdrawn or dropped during his tenure.  

When I ask how this history might affect his campaign, he says, “If [voters] have a choice between talking about home foreclosures and my personal life, they’ll want to talk about home foreclosures. My strategy is to stick to what’s important to people.”—CS

Dale Cardwell, June 30, 1 p.m.

Photo by Jason Mallory

“When my story was the lead story on WSB, the ratings went up by a solid percentage point,” says former WSB investigative reporter turned estate planning consultant Dale Cardwell. “What is that, about 1,000 people? And when my story was not the lead story, the rating went down by a whole point.”

    Thus does Cardwell counter the argument that people trust reporters even less than they trust attorneys. None of which matters, he says, because no one should trust Saxby Chambliss.

 “When he created the amnesty bill, he was the sixth-largest recipient of PAC money in the Senate,” says Cardwell.

The amnesty bill to which Cardwell refers was Chambliss’ effort on behalf of farmers who wanted to streamline requirements for the agricultural temporary worker program.

“He is not a fiscal conservative,” says Cardwell. “Seven and a half years of Bushonomics has transferred vast amounts of capital into the hands of a handful of the ultra-wealthy. If you made $10 million in 1990, you made $700,000 less than you are clearing today. You made maybe $8.3 million, but today you’re making 9 million while the person who makes $65,000 gets a tax break of only $300.”

    Cardwell recommends a simplified tax system, one that would “assess zero percent capital gains taxes on people who invest in American products and American companies.”

    He opposes drilling for oil in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge—something incumbent Saxby Chambliss supports.

“We would be transferring money into something—fossil fuels—that is going away,” he says.

“The ocean off the coast of Georgia—up to 60 miles out—is relatively shallow, so it’s perfect for wind farms. They could energize a huge portion of the Eastern Seaboard. We need to get rid of our dependence on foreign oil. We should be completely free of oil. We can look to resources like coal. It is possible to have clean-burning coal, and we need more research into that.”

    As for Iraq, he says we should leave on “Day 1. …We can’t continue to be the traffic cop for a civilization that wants to destroy itself. But I also know we can’t pull out suddenly.”

Cardwell would support a national health-care plan that gives everyone $10,000 for initial preventative health-care services.

“We would still save money over what we are paying now,” he says.—SR

Rand Knight, July 1, 2:30 p.m.

Photo by Jeannie Williamceau
 
According to his e-mail signature and Web info, Rand Knight’s campaign is located at 3340 Peachtree Road—the high-rise Tower Place complex in Buckhead. So that’s where I go to interview him. But it turns out that’s only his mailing address. The campaign office is located at 2905 Peachtree Road, a modest old house nearly a mile south.

When I ask about the need for the Tower Place address, he responds, “It’s the nature of the business. It’s inconsequential.”

Aside from politics, what business is he in?

“I sell national security technology to the federal government, and that’s about all I can say about that,” he says.

In the Fox 5 Democratic candidate debate on June 29, Knight was one of only two candidates—Lanier was the other one—who said they would support a measure to legalize same-sex marriage.

“What I am saying is I am against any constitutional ban on same-sex marriage,” he tells me. “I would fight tooth and nail for civil unions. … I mean, why are we talking about gay marriage when people don’t have food on the table? People are giving up their pets to put food on the table.”

Knight says the answer to both our economic and security woes is water conservation and alternative energy development. Drought makes food resources scarce, which causes conflict, and we can see what oil dependence does. He says he’s uniquely qualified to oversee legislation on these issues.

 “The bottom line here is that I am certainly the only PhD running for the Senate. You’re certainly not going to find another bioscientist.”

None of this, he says, is the big story.

“The big story is ‘How does this guy, Rand Knight, who comes from nowhere and has never run for anything in his life, get the endorsement of the Georgia Association of Educators and the AFL-CIO? Why did they walk away from Jim Martin?’” he asks. “Labor [unions] wins the Democrat ticket in Georgia.”

 Knight, whose campaign literature states that his “family is steeped in Southern history and [he] can trace his family’s roots back more than a dozen generations in Georgia,” says, “If it comes to a runoff, I will win. The African-American block vote does not show up for runoffs.”
 
Why begin his public service career with something as ambitious as a run for the U.S. Senate? Why not aim for the state legislature first?

His answer: “The people who go through the B.S. at the state house are not the visionaries we need.”—SR   

Jim Martin, July 2, 8:30 a.m.

Photo by Spencer A. Freeman

Of all the candidates running, attorney Jim Martin has the longest resume as a publicly elected official. He also seems to have the most highly mechanized campaign.

In the first 12 days of his candidacy, Martin raised more money than Vernon Jones, who had announced his candidacy nearly a year earlier. Rather than reaching Martin directly, The Sunday Paper had to make an appointment through Scott McCall, Martin’s scheduler. The day before our talk, Martin’s campaign contacted me to inquire about the shape and scope of the story. During our phone interview, Martin asked if I minded his campaign manager, Ellery Gould, listening in on our conversation to make sure he stayed on message. I did not, but it was a request I had not heard from the other candidates.
   
Martin has been referred to as the establishment candidate by his opponents, who have called for him to return PAC money.     

“This is the first time in my career I’ve been called an insider,” he tells me, adding that PAC contributions make up only a small amount of his financing. Besides, it’s legal money, and he’ll use it to fight the GOP.      

As a U.S. Senator, Martin says he would also fight for tighter regulations of the oil futures market. He says that this, along with withdrawing our troops from Iraq and curbing America’s housing crisis, will propel the economy out of stagnation.
   
The housing crisis, Martin says, is particularly troubling to him, because it’s something he warned of years before Georgians first saw the effects. “One of my main messages [during the 2006 race for Lieutenant Governor] was predatory lending laws, which were repealed by Republicans, were going to cause problems.”—CS

The Libertarian: Allen Buckley, June 30, 
10 a.m.

The centerpiece of Libertarian Allen Buckley’s campaign is his belief that if the federal government is not greatly reduced, it will eventually collapse under its own weight. He sees this threat strengthened by “shortsighted politicians like Saxby Chambliss.” Buckley, an attorney, specifically points to crop subsidies endorsed by Chambliss, which he says go mostly to large “factory” farms. Even if independent farmers were reaping the benefits, Buckley says he would not endorse entitlements for farmers beyond basic insurance against crop failure.

“I’m not in favor of subsidies,” he tells me. “If you don’t think you can make much money farming, don’t farm.”

Buckley advocates increasing Medicare costs for seniors and canceling food stamps for any individual without a disability.

Projections by the Government Office of Accountability, he says, show “debt that spirals out of control.” As the interest builds on America’s debt, “most of our spending, federal tax dollars, will go toward debt. That’s in 20-30 years. By then, we’re finished.” 
 
How do we avoid this? “We create an incentive to get the government down to where we need it.”

Under Buckley’s tax plan, anyone earning below the poverty line would go untaxed, aside from Social Security and Medicare payments. Earnings reaching $25,000 above the poverty line would receive a 20 percent tax rate. Anything above that would get what Buckley calls the “X rate,” a percentage calculated to balance federal income with federal spending. The plan would mandate a balanced budget every year, except during times of depression or extreme recession.—CS

The man to beat

Incumbent Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss, June 30, 4:23 p.m.
Photo courtesy Saxby Chambliss

 “The guy’s a conservative and he’s a Republican, and I’m a conservative and a Republican,” says Republican incumbent Sen. Saxby Chambliss of President George W. Bush.

Chambliss, who is calling me from northern Florida, where he is on his once-a-year vacation, adds, “When he is right, I vote with him, and when he’s wrong, I vote against him. I just voted against him on the Farm Bill for the third time.”

Indeed, for years President Bush has persisted in his attempts to cut farm subsidies. When the Farm Bill came up for renewal in 2007, Bush insisted that farmers who earn more than $200,000 a year not be allowed to receive subsidies. The House and Senate, Republicans and Democrats alike, overwhelmingly opposed him. Instead, a majority of the lawmakers supported the bill’s provision that allows farmers with an income of up to $750,000 and non-farm income of up to $500,000 to receive subsidies.

The guidelines apply to direct payments that are disbursed based on land acreage—whether the land is actively farmed or not—regardless of current market conditions. At present, thanks to the tight food market, farmers are getting the most money they’ve ever gotten for their crops. To fend off the passage of the lawmakers’ proposal in 2007, Bush extended the existing farm bill for another year.

But when the Farm Bill’s renewal was resurrected this year, only two Senate Democrats voted against it. Fifteen Republicans voted against it. Chambliss was not among them.

He has supported the subsidy-packed farm bill for the past three of its renewals. The House overrode Bush’s veto of the Farm Bill in May. It—and its hefty subsidies—went into effect almost immediately.

Chambliss was elected to Congress to represent Georgia’s 8th congressional district in 1994. He then successfully ran for the Senate in 2002. So he’s a known quantity. But on the topic of Iraq, he unexpectedly tells me, “I think you will see significant draw-downs this summer.”

He says they should be patient and orderly, not sudden, but some troop draw-downs are likely to happen before September.

“We’ve got to be there until we win. That is happening now,” he says. “To find a story on Iraq in the newspaper now, you’ve got to turn to page 20, and that is because we are prevailing in Iraq. The Iraqi army is improving and is better able to protect Iraq.”–SR
SP