DoraBlog

Dustin Brookshire has published an interview with Chris Huttman, the Democratic candidate for the 81st district. Here’s a short excerpt where Huttman talks about his history living in this area:

I’ve lived either within or about 2 miles away from what is now District 81 for 27 of my 28 years being alive. I went to elementary school with many voters that now reside in the district and graduated from Chamblee High School in 1998 in the district. In 2003, I lived in what was then District 53 (Chambers was the incumbent) before the lines were changed by the court. At that point my house was across the street from the new District 81. In 2005, when I chose to purchase my first home I bought a condo in the Chamblee mid-city district, again being located in District 81. Yet I didn’t run against Chambers in 2006 which makes her attack look silly. Most voters that I talk to are excited that younger people such as myself who grew up in the area choose to make it their home later in life. Jill knows her attack is untrue, yet again is counting on the voters not being smart enough to do their own research beyond her mail pieces. I’ve chosen to run my campaign in a different way which respects the intelligence of our voters by focusing on issues and Chambers’s legislative record and what I would do differently, not the rental and ownership history of the other candidate over the past 10 years.

Read the full interview at Dustin’s site.

The race for House District 81 is always closely watched. This area tends to vote for Democrats when it comes to presidents and senators, but Jill Chambers has consistently won her state house races here by much more than 50%. She has a chorus of supporters (commenters on this blog and elsewhere) who praise her for being a “moderate” Republican, and dismiss any of her campaign shenanigans as “just politics.” Recently, though, Chambers’ image has been wilting a bit under the glare of several local bloggers.

One of the highest-profile blogs to write about Chambers’ campaign was Drifting Through The Grift. On it, blogger Grift Drift writes that:

Chambers went on to use the tragedy of her mother’s death to attempt to justify her politics. That’s not framing politics through life experience. That’s playing politics with things that should remain most personal.

The only thing worse than taking a shot at an ill mama is using a dead mama as a political prop.

Grift goes on to endorse Chris Huttman in the district as the “least dirty” of the two politicians.

Another blogger, at the site “Chamblee 54,” references Chambers’ ongoing vendetta against Jeremy Tanner – the local man who filed an ethics complaint against her for accepting campaign donations in excess of the legal limit from medical industry lobbyists. He writes that “Mrs. Chambers recently sent out a mailer about this complaint. In it, the address and phone number of the complainer are published.” Chambers has really stepped her harassment of Tanner, a private citizen, up a notch – sending his home address out to every voting household in the district. It appears that Chambers upped the ante on her threat that Tanner was “in serious trouble” for having dared question her conduct. Now her supporters have his address and can start harassing him, too.

The most damning report, however, comes from the blog of Dustin Brookshire, who actually worked on Chambers’ re-election campaign in 2004. Dustin saw the dirty laundry of the Chambers machine up close and personal like few people have. He describes the moment when he became disenchanted with the Chambers campaign:

One of the gentleman she hired to manage her campaign asked me to attend a fundraiser for Rep Chambers’s opposition to count how many drinks the opposition consumed during the night.

He goes on to write:

After working with Rep Chambers, I believe she did exactly what Tanner claims. Rep Chambers seems to likes to use intimidation when she feels she needs to show her power

In another post, Brookshire points to Jill Chambers’ hypocrisy in lambasting Chris Huttman for supporting Vernon Jones at one time – when she has actually accepted campaign donations from him!

I’ve long thought that Chambers’ “anything but the issues” campaign tactics show contempt for the voters. It looks like other people who pay attention to this district are starting to believe that too.