DuBose Porter just jumped into 2010 Democratic race for governor

House Minority Leader DuBose Porter of Dublin has officially announced that he would enter the 2010 Democratic campaign for governor. In an e-mail just received, the state lawmaker and newspaper publisher identified transportation as the determining straw.

He followed his e-mail up with a phone call. “People are going to have plenty of time to think about a change in leadership while they sit in traffic,” Porer said.

Porter joins former labor commissioner David Poythress and Attorney General Thurbert Baker in the contest. Former Gov. Roy Barnes is still in the wings.

Porter said an increasingly crowded field didn’t preclude conversations among the gubernatorial candidates to negotiate a single candidate in July 2010. “Politics is an evolving process. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn’t. We’ve already seen what happens when it doesn’t,” Porter said — a reference to the debilitating Mark Taylor-Cathy Cox fight in 2006.

Below is the e-mailed statement from Porter:

After this year’s failure to pass a transportation funding bill by the Republican leadership it has become apparent that if Georgia is to move forward there will have to be a new vision coming from the Governor’s office. Smaller government is good, but not when its goal is to dismantle transportation, law enforcement, and education. These are vital services that must be maintained if Georgia is to move forward with America.

The governor and his leadership team have used this economic downturn as an excuse to dismantle these fundamental programs; programs on which our entire economy rests. This session we sponsored HB 365 which offered up a way to find an expected $1 billion in uncollected revenue without raising taxes a dime. HB 356 would have implemented a new point of sales policy exactly like Alabama. This governor and his leadership in the House and Senate chose to turn this money down because it would have funded a lot of the programs they chose to cut. Programs our citizens needed.

The governor and this leadership were cutting the funding to QBE funding formula which goes to our schools and law enforcement when we had money and now they have added transportation to their list. This year’s lack of leadership on transportation and their personal grabs for power at the expense of the people convinced me to throw my hat into the ring.

Poythress, too, on Monday named transportation as a crucial issue in the coming campaign. Said Poythress, in a statement:

Our need for action on transportation both in metro and rural Georgia is critical. And not just to reduce commute times. If we don’t get results soon, it will further drag down our economy. In fact a recent study on transportation- commissioned by Governor Perdue reported that 320,000 jobs could be lost because of nagging transportation problems. This is unacceptable.

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