Your morning jolt: Sonny Perdue’s doubts about a ban on texting while driving

After signing a water conservation bill on Tuesday, Gov. Sonny Perdue explained why he might veto SB 360, a bill that would ban adult drivers from texting while at the wheel.

Gov. Sonny Perdue signs a water conservation bill at Buford Dam Park on Tuesday. Vino Wong, vwong@ajc.com

This from 11Alive:

“I’ve got some concerns over the enforceability of that,” Perdue said at a news conference….

The governor has until June 8th to sign all bills into law. The bill in question is S.B. 360, also known as Caleb’s Law. It bans texting while driving for anyone 18 and older; the problematic area is the part that makes it illegal to “read any text based communication.”

Here is Perdue’s example to describe why enforcing that part could be an issue:

“If I get my e-mails and I pick up a smart-phone and read my e-mails, I’m violating the law. But if I print out my e-mails and I have a sheet of paper driving [and look at it], then I haven’t violated the law.

Candidates fell over Alabama last night. Here’s the bodycount from the Associated Press:

A candidate lost his bid to become Alabama’s first black governor in the state’s Democratic primary, while voters in another race there ousted a congressman months after he switched from the Democratic party to the GOP.

In the Alabama governor’s race, U.S. Rep. Artur Davis was overwhelmed by a white Democratic primary opponent who had garnered support from the state’s four major black political groups. Agriculture Commissioner Ron Sparks won the Democratic primary with 62 percent of the vote to Davis’s 38 percent, with 96 percent of the precincts reporting.

The state’s traditional civil rights organizations backed Sparks after Davis voted against President Barack Obama’s federal health care overhaul. But Davis, a Harvard lawyer who led Obama’s campaign here in 2008, had endorsements from Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., a civil rights pioneer from Alabama, and Mobile’s first black mayor, Sam Jones.

Voter Ben Ray picked Sparks, who has taken positions popular with Democrats, calling for an expansion of gambling, including a lottery, and supporting the federal health care plan.

“I just like his position on the education lottery,” Ray said. “I think we need that here.”

The chairman of the black Alabama Democratic Conference, Joe Reed, said Davis was hurt by refusing to seek the endorsements of African-American groups and by voting against the federal health care plan.

Seven GOP candidates for governor were competing in their party’s primary Tuesday, and the top vote-getters were expected to go to a runoff on July 13.

A recount will likely determine who will join former two-year college chancellor Bradley Byrne in a Republican runoff for governor on July 13.
Byrne secured a runoff spot with 28 percent of the vote in Tuesday’s primary.

The second spot is too close to call with Tuscaloosa physician Robert Bentley leading Greenville businessman Tim James by 140 votes with 99 percent of the precincts reporting.

The blog Georgia Liberal, a relatively new presence on the Georgia political scene, has issued a list of Democratic endorsements in the July primary: Both Porters, for governor and lieutenant governor; Michael Thurmond for U.S. Senate; Rob Teilhet for attorney general; Gail Buckner for secretary of state, and several other contests.

Ken Hodges, one of two Democratic candidates for attorney general, is passing around a new biographical video.

Many have noted the hurdle that Hodges faces among African-Americans because of his failure to prosecute in the 2003 case of a white police officer who shot and killed an unarmed black motorist in Columbus.

So it is significant that Hodges opens the video with the testimony of Mary Jenkins of Albany, an African-American whose 18-year-old grandson was murdered. Hodges prosecuted the killer, who is now serving out a life sentence:

U.S. Rep. Sanford Bishop is stepping into a census dispute that wraps prisons, illegal immigration and rural depopulation into a single package. From the Associated Press:

For the first time, states have the option of counting people in detention centers and prisons as residents of their last address before they’re detained, worrying some local lawmakers who say cities and counties that host detention centers could lose money.

“Detention centers and prisons should probably count where they are located, that’s where resources would be required,” Rep. Sanford D. Bishop, D-Georgia wrote in a May letter to the chairman of the subcommittee that oversees the census. Bishop represents Stewart County, Georgia, population 4,600, where the nation’s largest detention center housed a total of 14,000 people between April 2007 and March 2008.

ICE operates 22 immigrant detention centers and also houses people in hundreds of other jails or prisons. Most of the largest centers are in small towns in Texas, Arizona and Georgia. Texas is home to six detention centers, and Arizona has three.

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