While May 24th’s primaries may lack the suspense of 2014’s open Senate seat or the drama of what promises to be a bare-knuckle brawl in 2018 for a shot at the Governorship, there are a lot of positions to be filled and incumbents to be challenged here in 2016. From Congressional seats to School Board posts and every Sheriff and Commissioner in between, what this election cycle lacks in intrigue it makes up for in quantity.
One of the more high profile of these races is the Cobb Commission Chairman’s race, where two Republican challengers are squaring off with incumbent Tim Lee to try to become the head honcho in Georgia’s third most populous county.
Lee, first elected in 2010, has in recent years come under fire from people both inside and outside of Cobb following his involvement in luring the Braves northward and constructing Suntrust Park. Many voters were outraged by the lack of transparency surrounding the deal, and were further incensed when they were ignored at various meetings and town halls following the news of the move.
Larry Savage, a Lee opponent in 2012, (he came up 29 points short) was among those critics of the move. In 2014 he filed an ethics complaint against the Commission Chairman, alleging that the revenue bonds used to secure funding for the stadium were against the State Constitution. That claim was thrown out, as were the charges that Lee used a private email to circumvent open records laws and that he used a private attorney off of the county payroll to negotiate the move. Savage’s name will be on the ballot again in May, and his message of ‘holding government accountable’ remains the core of his platform.
The other name on the ballot is Mike Boyce, who like Savage was a Lee challenger in 2014, though he saw notably more support. Boyce took 23% of the vote in the primary, leaving him just 3 points short of former Commissioner Bill Byrne, who then moved on to face, (and lose to) Lee in the runoff by a mere five point margin. This time around though, Byrne’s name isn’t on the ballot – good news for Boyce as he attempts to consolidate the ‘anti-Lee’ sentiment in the county. He’s certainly been busy, with his campaign claiming to have made upwards of 25,000 campaign calls already heading into the final month and a half of the race.
Boyce and Savage are counting on some residual distaste in the mouths of Cobb voters still angry at not being heard before their local government ponied up some $350 million of taxpayer dollars for a new baseball stadium, not to mention the whispers of ethics violations that have followed Lee since.
The current mood though, may favor the Chairman.
A quick drive around South Cobb makes it evident that the area is blowing up. New apartments are springing up at a rate that rivals Buckhead, roads and bridges are being built across, over, and around I-75 and I-285, and more jobs are on the way in the form of the rapidly-rising Suntrust Park and surrounding mixed-use development. Of course questions about parking and traffic remain, but those don’t figure to become major issues until 2017 when Cobb residents discover, (or possibly don’t?) that their commutes become parking lots the 80-some nights a year when the Braves are in town.
For now though, Lee and his campaign seem primed to reap the rewards of the business he’s brought to the area. His signs are visible on the property of many of the new developments that have sprung up since news broke that the Braves were coming to the county. Expect too that he’ll have the deepest pockets in the race down the stretch, as local businesses were the main proponents of a major league baseball team making its way closer to their front doors, (and wallets).
