With incumbent Gov. Sonny Perdue subject to term limits, the field to succeed him for the GOP nomination in 2010 is pretty much wide open.
Already understood to have designs on the top job—and jockeying for position in the media with barbs over the outcome of this year’s legislative session—are Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle and House Speaker Glenn Richardson. And now one of the state’s veteran Republican constitutional officers, Insurance Commissioner John Oxendine, is getting into the mix.
“As a taxpayer I was disappointed that we did not see meaningful tax relief,“ Oxendine said.
He said he was also frustrated that the state Legislature failed to approve a plan to fund transportation improvements and to create a steady stream of funding for the state’s trauma network.
Cagle and Richardson are among those often mentioned as likely candidates to succeed Perdue when his second term expires.
But Oxendine, previewing a possible line of attack in the race, said animosity between the House and the Senate makes a neutral candidate more attractive.
“I think in the current climate for the next governor to come from the House or the Senate would be very difficult from an effective government standpoint,“ he said.»
Oxendine running for governor
He has a point, which as a Cagle partisan I’m not real happy to concede. The factions were not equally responsible for what went on this year—Richardson took his job title too seriously by shooting off his mouth without thinking, and threw a monkeywrench into Perdue’s plans, such as they might have been, even before the session started. Cagle, for the crime of trying to salvage something coherent from the wreckage (and for being a likely rival to Richardson for the governorship), has been the target of the Shrieker’s venom in what appears to have been an effective campaign to deflect blame.
I expect Oxendine to draw Richardson’s ire very quickly for this announcement.
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