Tea Party Traffic

Interesting election results from Atlanta yesterday - - see the Wall Street Journal.  Read the comments online from readers.  You get a really good landscape photograph of Americana by reading the reaction to this vote.  From the online article:

By Cameron McWhirter

ATLANTA—Money and heavyweight endorsements don’t secure an election – especially when you propose higher taxes in a deeply conservative state with a robust tea-party movement.
A plan for a transportation sales tax was endorsed by Georgia’s Republican governor and the Democratic mayor of the state’s largest city. It was backed by the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce and the area’s top businesses. It was pushed by top political consultants funded by more than $8 million in corporate and other donations.

Those against the plan were a loose coalition of tea-party activists, some environmentalists and a local branch of the NAACP. Their total raised? About $15,000.

But David slew Goliath.

The final tally shows the referendum soundly defeated at the ballot box Tuesday, with 63% voting against it and only 37% voting for it.

 

Proponents spent months pushing the plan to increase metro Atlanta’s sales tax by a penny to raise billions of dollars for a laundry list of road and mass transit project across the area. The “Untie Atlanta” campaign appealed for the tax hike to help alleviate the region’s notorious congestion and infuse its sagging economy with construction jobs.

Gov. Nathan Deal, a conservative Republican, and Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, a Democrat with close ties to the Obama administration, stumped hard, with television appearances, rallies and speeches. Major area corporations, including Coca-Cola Co., Delta Air Lines Inc. and Home Depot Inc. contributed thousands to the cause and urged workers to support the plan. Advertising ran on television, radio and in print. Robocalls rang in homes across the region and glossy fliers were dropped in thousands of mailboxes.

All for naught.

The bottom line: Most voters didn’t believe government would wisely spend the new tax revenues – estimated at about $8.5 billion over a decade – and seriously address traffic, which everyone here agrees is horrendous.

A humbled Mayor Reed spoke to supporters late Tuesday night saying he would “stick out my chin and take the loss,” but urged the region to go back to the drawing board to find another plan that voters might accept. Both he and the governor have begun talks about what to do now about alleviating traffic problems in the nation’s ninth-largest metropolitan area, with a population of about 5.3 million.
“What we need now is a bigger table, a bigger table for our friends who disagreed with us,” Mr. Reed said.

The proposal lost in all 10 of the metro area’s counties.

“People as exemplified by this vote have really lost faith in their government to mean what it says,” said Phil Kent, a local conservative commentator who pushed for a no vote.
The mass transit part of the plan was “totally rejected” by voters, most of whom don’t use public transportation, and many saw the road projects as government aid programs “for construction companies and real estate moguls,” he said.

Joseph Crespino, an historian at Emory University and an expert on southern conservatism, said the vote reflected deep voter distrust.

“These [voters] are people who are suspicious of public officials using their money wisely,” he said.