One job that very few people seem to want
Wanted: Seasonal employees for winter months and occasional work the rest of the year. Preference given to those with other full-time jobs, though applicants will be expected to put their other job responsibilities aside for weeks at a time. Extensive travel may be required. Thick skin and public-speaking skills a plus. Fundraising experience a major plus. Pay: $17,000 a year, plus expenses.
Despite the down economy, that job description drew relatively few applicants: just 410 for 236 positions, compared to almost 20,000 people who recently put in for the 877 new jobs at an Alabama auto plant.
Making Hyundais, it appears, is more appealing work than making laws in Georgia.
The Republican and Democratic parties in May held qualifying for this year’s local, state and federal elections. As usual, the number of candidates for the job of state representative or senator is underwhelming.
As in 2010, about three in five incumbent state legislators are running completely unopposed, with no challenger in the July primary or November’s general election (barring third-party entrants or write-in candidates). And that actually represents more competition than in 2006 and 2008.
Worse, just six incumbent senators out of 54, and eight of 156 seeking re-election to the House, are opposed in both the primary and general elections.
Open seats aren’t much more competitive, with 18 of 26 in the House and one of two in the Senate being contested by just one of the major parties.
Redistricting brought new maps for this year’s legislative seats, and there’s no denying the Republican-leaning seats got redder and the Democrat-leaning seats bluer. But I think that’s only part of the story.
Bottom line, being a state legislator is a pretty crummy deal. Don’t believe me? Take another look at the job description at the top of this column. Sure, I could have polished it to make it sound more appealing, but I didn’t exaggerate the downside. I didn’t have to.
If you live and work in, say, Ocilla, you’re looking at driving 180 miles to Atlanta on Monday morning, spending the week away from your family and your regular job, then driving back home for the weekend. And then repeating that weekly, for the better part of January through March, and often much of April.
And then coming back to Atlanta every now and then for committee meetings through the summer and fall.
And, of course, having to run for re-election every two years, which means spending a lot of your free time raising money.
Back when most of the state was agrarian, a farmer could afford to spend much of the winter away from home and serving the public. (Legislative sessions also tended not to last as long back then.) Nowadays, few people are farmers, and most jobs don’t give one the luxury of taking off two and three and four months at a time.
One of the suggestions I’ve gotten while writing about ethics reform during the past several months is that we just need to elect more ethical people. If you believe that, you have to recognize the dearth of people willing to do the job at all.
Ethics reform aside, more electoral competition would be a good thing. Changing ballot-access laws to allow more third-party entrants is one possibility. Paying legislators more — though not, in my view, making the job full-time — has to be on the table. I’d even consider holding mini-sessions of the Legislature throughout the year rather than one solid block of time in the winter, or having legislators meet biennially.
But if we want more competitive elections, we need to make the job itself more attractive.
– By Kyle Wingfield
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94 comments Add your comment
I Report (-: You Whine )-: mmm, mmmm, mmmmm! Just sayin...
June 2nd, 2012
5:16 pm
Whatever fault one wants to ascribe to Obama’s predecessor, and whatever excuses the president can dream up, what is now beyond any reasonable dispute is that Obama has no clue how to fix things. That is not a political judgment; it’s an empirical one.
Had enough?
ragnar danneskjold
June 2nd, 2012
5:36 pm
When George W visited the White House this week for the hanging of his official portrait, he had the best line: “I know President Obama is comforted knowing that, as he walks these halls pondering the problems of the world, he can now ask, ‘What would George do?’”
@@
June 2nd, 2012
5:43 pm
Another AJC Blog columnist puts up a musical tribute to Doc Watson, and somehow….the contributors prefer to compete for “the gayest song of the 80s.”
That place gets weirder with each passing day….its own little organized community….far removed from the daily realities.
MarkV
June 2nd, 2012
5:48 pm
Dusty @5:11 pm
It will be my dream job, but what about my job of pointing out the fallacies of the conservatives on this blog?
Now with Ten Percent Fewer Calories
June 2nd, 2012
7:29 pm
Sounds like the perfect application for a lottery to me. If your lucky sequence of numbers gets picked, you serve for free for one two-year term. No salary but you can accept all the gifts you want but you have to pay a minimum of 50% tax on the gifts and if you are ever caught not reporting all gifts in excess of $50, you go to jail.
Dusty
June 2nd, 2012
7:32 pm
MarkV 5:48
Surely you jest! The conservatives of this blog have NO fallacies. It is all in your imagination! Take the dream job!!
But I find no happiness at this moment! The BRAVES lost their game without a single hit. Not one!!
Awwww……but next time……..YES!!..next time………
Rafe Hollister- trying to save the Choom Gang
June 2nd, 2012
7:47 pm
Dusty,
Loyal Braves fan you are, you missed Constanza being 2-3 and Heyward had a hit as well. Think they had one other, but not sure. Ran into some good pitching; Beachy deserved better. Gettem tomorrow.
Bob Baldwin, sorry to bother you, you are not the Bob Baldwin I had in mind.
Dusty
June 2nd, 2012
7:47 pm
Ten Percent @7:29
Your lottery suggestion sounds like a sure ticket to the jail house. I think our legislators already know how to do that.
I think we might as well elect all the lobbyists. They know their way around government buildings and there won’t be anybody to bribe them. Most of them look good too.
There may be a hitch to this plan but I can’t think of it right now!
MarkV
June 2nd, 2012
7:52 pm
Dusty @7:32 pm
It is a difficult job, because there are so many fallacies on the right, but somebody has to do it. One has to try to improve the world.
Dusty
June 2nd, 2012
7:53 pm
Rafe, 7:47
You are correct. I should have said nobody scored. All the good batters had little vim & vigor. I was hoping they were really “going” again. Not today. But next time…..YES!
Dusty
June 2nd, 2012
7:57 pm
MarkV 7:52
Yes, let us try to improve the world…. but not one word at a time. Vote for Romney and save the country first!!
Hillbilly D
June 2nd, 2012
8:39 pm
It is not that big of a deal to be a Representative in the state legislature. There are probably 20% of the constituents that would even know who you were.
It might be like that in the Big City but where I live, everybody knows you and you’re fair game at the grocery store or anyplace else. In my opinion, that’s the way it should be; keep the elected close to those who do the electing.
MarkV
June 2nd, 2012
10:08 pm
Dusty @7:57 pm
The country might survive President Romney. Just barely, but it might. But I would rather not take that chance.
Hillbilly D
June 2nd, 2012
10:59 pm
I wonder if those shenanigans had been down at the VFW or the county line beer joint, instead of the Piedmont Driving Club, if the names would’ve been withheld.
Lil' Barry Bailout (Revised Downward)
June 2nd, 2012
11:56 pm
MaryK doesn’t want to take a chance the country wouldn’t survive Romney. He’d rather stick with with the sure thing–the America-hating, capitalism-despising a-wipe Obozo.
@@
June 3rd, 2012
12:24 pm
George Will on Wisconsin’s labor unions:
I’ll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up.
No sir,
Not I,
Not me,
So there!
– “Peter Pan” the musical, 1954
The emblem displayed at some anti-Walker centers is an outline of Wisconsin rendered as a clenched fist, with a red star on the heel of the hand. Walker’s disproportionately middle-aged adversaries know the red star symbolized murderous totalitarianism, yet they flaunt it as a progressive ornament. Why?
Because it satisfies the sandbox socialists’ childish pleasure in naughtiness, as does their playground name-calling (Walker is a “Midwest Mussolini”) and infantile point-scoring: When the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel endorsed Walker, Wisconsin’s Democratic Party chair fulminated that six decades ago the Sentinel (which merged with the Journal in 1995) supported McCarthy.
Also, many backward-looking baby boomers want to recapture their youthful fun of waving clenched fists in the face of privilege.
That’s how I see ‘em too. Swimming “downstream” to spawn the OWS crowd. Reminds me of a certain someone here and at jay’s.
schnirt
http://www.sunherald.com/2012/06/02/3983752/wisconsins-temper-tantrum.html#wgt=rcntnews
I Report (-: You Whine )-: mmm, mmmm, mmmmm! Just sayin...
June 3rd, 2012
12:33 pm
A January poll found that even 17 percent of Democrats think that recalls are justified only by criminal behavior, not policy differences. If, however, Walker loses, regular Wisconsin elections will henceforth confer only evanescent legitimacy. If he wins, progressives will have inadvertently demonstrated that entrenched privilege can be challenged, and they will have squandered huge sums that cannot finance progressive causes elsewhere. So, for a change, progressives will have served progress.
I hope you libs are ready for your major league, schoolyard a$$ whooping come Tuesday.
Just think of it as practice for November.
I Report (-: You Whine )-: mmm, mmmm, mmmmm! Just sayin...
June 3rd, 2012
12:36 pm
geez, @@, the same George Will article at almost the same time?
You looking over my shoulder? (-:
@@
June 3rd, 2012
1:47 pm
Andy:
You looking over my shoulder?
If you’re looking at the lake, I could only HOPE to be looking over your shoulder.
It’s more likely we have the same homepage.
Limozina
June 3rd, 2012
1:52 pm
“…that job description drew relatively few applicants: just 410 for 236 positions,…”
There are way too many uncontested state legislature races. That seems ironic, given the level of mistrust and disgust among the electorate. The best way to keep the process honest is to encourage, and make it easier for, more ordinary people to step up and run against these entrenched incumbents.
I Report (-: You Whine )-: mmm, mmmm, mmmmm! Just sayin...
June 3rd, 2012
4:27 pm
Obama the Fallen Superhero – Maureen Dowd, New York Times
Green Lantern to be relaunched as gay superhero (CBS/AP)
Just sayin…
Dusty
June 3rd, 2012
6:27 pm
Wake up, folks.
I know you want to dance and sing ’cause the BRAVES WON. Yes, they did. Beat those Nationals. Happy days are here again la la la la la……
Hillbilly D
June 3rd, 2012
6:45 pm
Be interesting to see how this thing works in the real world. Sort of looks like a Figure 8 racetrack to me. The traffic flow in the video also looks pretty light for the area. (Some of the comments are the best part of this video).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gY8xU-UAQWs
@@
June 3rd, 2012
8:42 pm
States explore new ways to tax motorists for road repair
As the (national vehicle) fleet becomes more fuel efficient … we’re going to lose a lot of revenue from the gas tax. If it’s not replaced, we’re going to see our transportation infrastructure deteriorate,” says Joshua Schank, president of the non-partisan Eno Center for Transportation in Washington, D.C. He expects to see a state vehicle miles-traveled (VMT) tax within the next five to10 years.
The greatest obstacle to a miles-traveled tax has been privacy concerns. When Oregon ran a pilot program six years ago, motorists’ major objection was to in-vehicle boxes used to track miles driven, says James Whitty of the Oregon Department of Transportation. “They didn’t like the government boxes. They didn’t like the GPS mandate,” he says.
Other options being considered: People who don’t want to use technology may be able to pre-pay for a certain amount of miles or buy an unlimited amount of miles with a flat annual tax.
In Minnesota, 500 volunteers in largely urban Hennepin and mostly rural Wright counties have been testing a system using software installed on smartphones, says Chris Krueger, spokeswoman for the Minnesota Department of Transportation. “We can collect trip info and be able to simulate what it would be like to have a mileage-based user fee,” she says.
A federal miles-traveled tax is unlikely, Schank says. “So far, the federal government has been terrified of even talking about this,” he says. “The federal government needs to take a leadership role in helping states do this.You want to have sharing of information, compatibility across state lines.”
The government already gets to reach inside our pants. Now they wanna look too!!??!!
Perverts!
Lil' Barry Bailout (Unexpectedly Revised Downward--Again)
June 3rd, 2012
8:48 pm
Somehow states will need to make sure the folks driving electric cars are paying their “fair share” for road maintenance and construction.
Hillbilly D
June 3rd, 2012
9:02 pm
@@
I’m guessing some smart lawyer would challenge that on illegal search grounds. I’m not a lawyer, though.
Wanna Be Candidate
June 3rd, 2012
10:01 pm
I was interested in running for office and discussed it with my political party officials. The first thing I was asked was “Can you raise $500,000 in a few months?” And therein my friends, lies the problem. We need campaign finance reform.
@@
June 3rd, 2012
10:19 pm
Hillbilly:
I have no doubt. For them to even conceive of such an invasion boggles the mind.
LBB:
My thoughts exactly. Low-income people can’t afford electric cars. Looks like they’ll be picking up the tab for the environmentally “conscientious” crowd. How fair is that?
Unintended consequences? Sometimes I wonder.
Lil' Barry Bailout (Unexpectedly Revised Downward--Again)
June 3rd, 2012
10:23 pm
Wanna Be, how do you reform campaign finance such that candidates don’t have to raise money?
Government financing of elections? OK–how does the government determine which candidates get funding?
Hillbilly D
June 3rd, 2012
10:34 pm
I haven’t figured out exactly how an electric car is “environmentally conscious”. The electricity is either generated by natural gas or coal, in most cases. The next big question is what happens to the battery after it’s bad. They say they’ll be recycled but they say the same thing about those plastic bottles with the high dollar water in them. How many of those wind up not being recycled? A sizable amount don’t, judging from the trash on the sides of the highway.
Electric cars, at least for the foreseeable future, are only practical for city dwellers who drive short distances.
And speaking of which, there’s an interesting article in the National Geographic about solar storms and what they can do to the electrical power grid.
A hint came with the Quebec blackout of March 13, 1989, when a solar storm roughly a third less powerful than the Carrington event knocked out the power grid serving more than six million customers in less than two minutes’ time.
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2012/06/solar-storms/ferris-text
MarkV
June 3rd, 2012
10:59 pm
“Electric cars, at least for the foreseeable future, are only practical for city dwellers who drive short distances.”
Aren’t there plenty of those?
“The next big question is what happens to the battery after it’s bad. They say they’ll be recycled but they say the same thing about those plastic bottles with the high dollar water in them.”
Comparing expensive batteries with water bottles?
@@
June 3rd, 2012
11:00 pm
DANG, Hillbilly! ‘Ya gotta go with the trends. If not, someone will call you a backwoods bumpkin.
(ISH)
I guess the environmentalists forget that, in order to make cars more fuel efficient, the bodies are composed of plastic, a petroleum based product. The tires, the roads….all petroleum based.
The inconvenient truth (not Al’s) isn’t trendy.
@@
June 3rd, 2012
11:10 pm
And that’s not to mention that the Volt’s battery is sealed in aluminum and encased in………
PLASTIC!
schnirt
Hillbilly D
June 3rd, 2012
11:19 pm
Mark V
There are plenty of people for whom an electric car might be practical. There are millions more that it won’t be practical for. I’m not opposed to electric cars, I just don’t think they’re a be all and end all, as some of their proponents make them out to be. We’re going to have the internal combustion engine, for quite a while yet, whether people like it or not.
I think our big mistake is putting all our eggs in one basket, when it comes to energy. That’s what got us into this mess to start with. Vehicles will need to be fairly standard, because of refueling problems. People will have to know they can go wherever they want and be able to get back home. The biggest problem with alternative fuels, at this point, is getting a refueling network going. I think natural gas is probably the first alternative that should really be explored. Bio-diesel can be another and ethanol should be looked into but not the way it’s done now. Corn based ethanol was just a way for agri-business to get subsidies.
For electrical generation, I prefer some sort of regional approach. Wind power and solar will work some places but not everywhere. Wave power might be an alternative and in Iceland I believe they use geo-thermal because they have the geography for it.
I believe that recycling is a good thing but it’s pretty much a given that most people will only recycle if it’s easy and painless. They won’t put any effort into it. You can’t always trust the folks in charge of the system, either. You get charged to recycle your tires but there are cases where the person who is supposed to recycle them, dumps them somewhere and pockets the money. Same thing happens with batteries. True the costs are less than the batteries we’re talking about but if there’s a system, somebody will figure a way to beat it.
So I didn’t say I was necessarily opposed to electric cars, I just said, I don’t see them as being “environmentally conscious”.
@@
You have a very good point on plastics. Remember when there was a deposit on coke bottles? (You may be too young). Michigan for one, used to have the same thing on aluminum cans (may still have, I ain’t been to Michigan since the 70’s). True, people still threw them out but other people would come along and pick them up and sell them back to the store (was 3¢ in my day). You can sell the plastic now but the price is so low, nobody bothers with it. In my opinion, they should institute a deposit in all plastic bottles.
Hillbilly D
June 3rd, 2012
11:22 pm
That should say “deposit on” not “deposit in”. Wish this thing had an edit feature like the baseball blogs do. Guess the AJC doesn’t keep up with the trends. (IW&SH)
@@
June 3rd, 2012
11:39 pm
Speaking of natural gas
Some fracking good news
The International Energy Agency has just released some data that green-minded fans of shale gas should appreciate. The organisation’s latest figures show that America’s carbon-dioxide emissions from generating energy have fallen by 450m tonnes, more than in any other country over the past five years.
They don’t though.
Some greens claim that fracking contaminates the air and groundwater and can even cause earthquakes (although there is no evidence linking fracking to increased seismic activity, according to the US Geological Survey).
There will always be those among us who would prefer life came free of all risks.
Good luck widdat!
Hillbilly D
June 3rd, 2012
11:50 pm
@@
I ain’t too crazy about fracking. It don’t take much to upset a water table. I’ve seen it plenty of times up here in the Hills, where water is a precious resource. When your water comes from a hole in the yard, you pay attention to such. They need to tread mighty lightly with the fracking. You don’t want to get years down the road and figure out it’s a bad thing, like Kudzu. (I still haven’t forgiven the UGA Extension Service for Kudzu).
stands for decibels
June 4th, 2012
8:29 am
But if we want more competitive elections, we need to make the job itself more attractive.
Agreed, and I think all of your suggestions–from having more/longer sessions, to increasing their pay to something commensurate with what professionals actually earn–are worthy.
@@
June 4th, 2012
8:57 am
Hillbilly:
Fracking has been going on since the 1940s, yet, it’s only NOW that attention is being paid?
Forbes has written some worthwhile articles on the process. You might wanna give ‘em a read.
MarkV
June 4th, 2012
9:59 am
Hillbilly D @11:19 pm
I agree with much in your post, which is far cry from the one at 10:34 pm. Still, here is plenty to argue with.
“There are plenty of people for whom an electric car might be practical. There are millions more that it won’t be practical for.”
You are making an interesting distiction. What is “:plenty” vs. “millions?
“I think our big mistake is putting all our eggs in one basket, when it comes to energy.”
Who wants to make that mistake? I have not heard any responsible environmentalist arguing that we should stop using fossil fuels completely and switch everything to renewable energy.
“The biggest problem with alternative fuels, at this point, is getting a refueling network going.”
I agree, but remember, the gas/diesel refueling stations did not grow like mushroom overnight. I quite agree with your comments about natural gas and ethanol, wind, solar , wave power and geo-thermal.
I disagree completely with your comments about recycling the electric car batteries in both your posts. These are expensive, heavy pieces of equipment. They are neither water bottles nor tires. When they are being replaced in a car, they will be automatically sent to recycling. This is not a matter of individuals deciding what to do with them.
Electric cars, both hybrids and plug-ins, save energy and environment. That makes them and their users definitely environmentally conscious.
saywhat?
June 4th, 2012
10:22 am
@@-”There will always be those among us who would prefer life came free of all risks”
____________________________________________________________________________
I have no problem with risks in life, if I am the one taking them, and I am the one who will suffer/benefit depending how things work out.
What I can’t abide is other people risking MY health so THEY can make money.
saywhat?
June 4th, 2012
10:32 am
Re: electric cars and gas taxes, the solution is simple. Electric cars still use tires, which wear out based on how much mileage they have on them. Simply replace the gas tax with a tire tax (based on a tire’s wear rating), perhaps with an occasional exemption for tires lost due to road hazard vs wear.
Darwin
June 4th, 2012
11:24 am
Kyle – I think most people believe that those who run for office are seeking something in return. The chance to make laws that favvor their full-time jobs (for example – real estate).
Atlanta Journal-Constitution Article on Paucity of Candidates for State Legislature in Georgia This Year | ThirdPartyPolitics.us
June 6th, 2012
3:33 am
[...] Atlanta Journal-Constitution has this article, pointing out that this year, approximately 60% of incumbents running for re-election have [...]