An Old Battle Flag Helps Bring Down a Governor

New York Times ^ | Thursday, November 7, 2002 | By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN

[Leroy S. Mort]

So is Perdue going to return to the old flag or is he going to wimp out and leave the new one in place?

Macon Telegraph 08/17/2002

ATLANTA - Sonny Perdue of Bonaire promised Georgians a referendum on the state flag during a Friday night debate among the three Republican gubernatorial candidates, while Linda Schrenko repeatedly was forced to defend her record of missed meetings as state school superintendent.

Perdue said that while he didn't favor an amendment to restore the old flag, if elected governor he would let Georgians vote on keeping the current flag or adopting a new one.

"I would restore the people's choice and allow us to choose and make the decision ourselves," Perdue said in the debate, which aired on Georgia Public Television.

While there is a great deal of lingering anger in parts of Georgia about the flag - both that the Confederate battle flag was reduced to the size of a pinpoint and how the flag was changed - many political observers don't expect the issue to be a decisive factor in this year's elections.

unquote

Restoring the flag will fail in a referendum and that will be the end of it, IMHO.

[CWRWinger]

Southerners, in Toccoa, GA., sure do know how to treat a great southern Confederate man, H. K Edgerton, when he marched through Toccoa. Mayor James A. Neal awarded H. K. with the Key to the City.

This gentleman, H.K. Edgerton, may have helped fire up the voters in GA, to give Barnes the boot.

[eddie willers]

If they want to go back to the pre 1956 flag it's OK with me.
Otherwise....leave it alone.

[georgiabelle]

It wasn't just angry White Southern Males. We Ladies had a hand in it too. I know people who voted this time who has never voted in their lives. Trouble was they wasn't voting for anything, just against Barnes.

If Barnes had put the flag issue to a vote not one word would have been said if it came down. But he sneaked it in the backdoor and tried to get a vote on it without anyone being told. Then he used his power of Governer to twist the arms of the ones that were against him by threating to with hold money from the state for their district.

He also made the comment that he wasn't worried about the next election, that the voters would forget about it by then. We didn't. In fact I would say that Southerners are notorious for holding grudges.

Was it the flag? Oh yeah, it was.