Candidates, how will you actually represent us?

Our half-century-long cold war with Iran entered a hot stage over the weekend. Every major leader of Iran’s government and military who was in place on October 7th, 2023, has been eliminated, along with most of those who led their terrorist proxy organizations.  Who and what replace them remain open and defining questions.

Here at home, it is qualifying week for Georgia politicians. While many campaigns have been announced for a year or longer – with some surprising recent entries keeping things from getting stale – candidates are officially paying their qualifying fees to put their names on ballots for primaries held in May.

In addition to open contests for Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Attorney General, Secretary of State, and four of Georgia’s fourteen seats in Congress, Georgians will have a hotly contested race for U.S. Senate.  Every other member of Congress must stand for re-election, with Congressman David Scott facing at least three announced primary challengers in a relatively newly redrawn district, which is vastly different than the one he represented for most of his two decades in Washington.

Every State Senator and State Representative will have to defend their current seat. Announcements for those not running for re-election picked up last week, as is custom. A few more usually happen the week of qualifying.

And within all of this backdrop of future plans, we must deal with the current business. Friday, March 6th, is “Crossover Day”, a self-imposed deadline by the legislature where a bill must pass one chamber to be considered by the other in this year’s session.  

The General Assembly has scheduled its final day – Sine Die – for April 2nd. Georgia’s primary elections are scheduled for May 19th, with runoffs, if necessary, on June 16th.  To paraphrase the guys from Bull Durham’s famous pitching mound scene, “We’re dealing with a lot.”

The truth is, we always are. Sometimes, many things crash our headlines at the same time. We, as citizens and voters, can easily get overwhelmed trying to figure it all out.

This is a good time to remind ourselves why we have representative government. It’s almost become a partisan thing to say, unfortunately, but there is a difference between a pure democracy and a republic.

We elect people at all levels of government to be the stewards of most of these policy decisions. In an age where social media goads us into believing we must have an opinion on everything – and then pretends every opinion is equally valid – we don’t have the time, nor do many have the wisdom to craft long-term solutions to all of these problems.

Elections are important because this is where we select the people who are supposed to make the time for understanding what the problems are before they happen, having proper policies in place to prevent them in advance or correct them if they do, and ultimately, do what is in the best interest of all of us.  This is a high bar that too many fail to meet, but it is the perspective we must maintain and enforce if our republic is to succeed.

We’re going to hear a lot about the President from both parties in the next seven months, in both the primaries and the general election. He is perhaps the biggest lightning rod of a leader in modern history, eliciting strong opinions in both directions.

Many Republicans will claim allegiance to him and his agenda. Many Democrats will pledge to stop anything he proposes or anyone who aligns with him. This is how the game is currently played.

No matter which side of the partisan aisle you fall – or remain somewhere in the middle – some perspective and outright skepticism of this approach is in order. We maintain divisions between the federal, state, and local governments for a reason.

We then have checks and balances among the legislative, executive, and judicial branches to ensure that the collaborative approach to a republic is maintained. Our founders avoided anything that resembled an all-powerful central government or a single executive consolidating power.

There’s perhaps an even more critical point here, especially for those who truly believe the President fully matches their own interests or none of them. He will only be President for two more years. If we’re electing someone whose entire message is to support or block him at every juncture, what is their plan to represent you and us after his term expires?

Campaigns are job interviews. We understand candidates come prepared with planned answers for the easy, expected questions.

We’re also hiring leaders for the long haul. At some point, they, too, will be dealing with a lot. We need to push them beyond platitudes and pledges of loyalty or opposition and get a true understanding of how they make hard decisions when times get tough.