So Brian Bates–the gay Republican candidate in Doraville’s city council race–lost his bid for public office. Tom Hart–the crackpot who thinks there are “no businesses in Doraville” (he really meant no “white” businesses) and who refused to speak to Atlanta’s gay & lesbian newspaper–will be my city councilman for the next 4 years. I’m disappointed, but not surprised. While there may have been some anti-gay sentiment that led to Brian’s defeat, I don’t think that was the main reason he lost. I’d say that Brian’s bigger problems were the people he surrounded himself with and the tactics he tried to persuade voters with.
First of all, I think Brian made a bad move by sending out a postcard saying Councilman Jason Anivitarte no longer backed Tom Hart. The mailing didn’t actually mention Hart’s statements to Southern Voice, nor did it even mention what he had done. Instead, it just claimed that Anavitarte no longer supported him. When I read it, the first thing that struck me was how similar this mailing was to the ones that (Republican state representative) Jill Chambers sent out about her opponent last year (saying that he’d been “arrested” but making no mention that the arrest had stemmed from a trumped up parking ticket). Anyway, I think that most people probably looked at this postcard and thought it was dirty politics. They may have decided as soon as they received it in the mail that they were going to vote for “the other guy.”
Another problem for Bate’s campaign was the fact that certain supporters of his on our city e-mail lists were being very loud (and sometimes nasty) about their support of Brian. Debate became a mere shouting match, and a lot of people were turned off by those tactics. Brian was never one of the people being loud or obnoxious, but it seemed to those of us on the outside that he was “tight” with the shouters. When I mentioned to him that I thought some of these tactics might end up hurting him, he just kind of shrugged and said that he couldn’t stop people from expressing their personal views. I guess that’s true, but I still don’t think his friends did him any favors.
The final problem for Bates were his political alliances. Within the city, he was closely alligned to councilwoman Marlene Hadden–who I personally like, but who a lot of Doraville’s old guard (many of whom live along my street) think of as a troublemaker. The other problem was that by closely associating himself with our Republican state representative, Jill Chambers, he alienated Jason Anivitarte–our city’s other “progressive” city councilman, and Jill Chambers’ opponent in the 2006 election for the state house seat. The old guard was going to vote against Marlene’s boy no matter what. Jason did his best to get progressives (or undecideds) to vote against him. In the end, they were apparently successful. It didn’t hurt that there were only 471 votes cast.
I think the real loser here is Doraville. All I’ve ever seen Tom Hart do in this town is run for office–I’ve certainly never seen him get involved in important issues on a grass roots or community level. It’s sad that he won his vanity campaign at such an important time in the city’s history–our (HUGE) GM plant will be closing in 2007, and what is done with the land it sits on will make or break Doraville.
The winners? Well, Tom Hart is an obvious winner. Another possible winner may be Jason Anivitarte, who worked hard against the Bates campaign. This defeat is certainly not just a defeat for Brian Bates, but also for the whole Jill Chambers machine, which has previously proven very effective at covering its opponents in stinking mud. I say that with some reservation, though, because I think the postcard thing did hurt Jason–especially since something very similar happened to him in the 2004 elections with Jill Chambers’ last opponent.
Anyway, 99.9% of you can breathe easy now that the election is over. I probably won’t have much more to write about this local politics stuff for a while.