Local & State Headlines

Candidates sign up in state House races

• Area politicians emerge, some with ready cash, to run for the Georgia House of Representatives.

Susan McCord

ALBANY — A former Sylvester mayor and an exterminator are among those who’ve qualified this week to run for the Georgia House of Representatives.

Retired army Lt. Col. John Tibbetts and Turner County businessman Doug Hughes will battle in the July 15 Democratic Primary to oppose six-term Republican Austin Scott in District 153, which spans Turner County and most of Tift.

“I think I’ve been challenged more than anybody,” Scott, 38, said. “The only year I went unopposed was the year after the flag changed.”

Tibbetts, 47, who teaches history at Tift County High School, ran against Scott, a Tifton insurance agent, two years ago.

“I’m out on the roads in Turner and Tift County every day and can carry the people’s feelings about what’s really going on to Atlanta,” said Hughes, 57, a former Sylvester city councilman and chairman of the Turner County Zoning Board who owns Doug Hughes Pest Control in Sylvester.

Both Democratic candidates said they aspire to work against gridlock in the state Legislature.

“They’ve got such problems with the Republican leadership in the House that they’ve accomplished nothing,” Tibbetts said.

All three said health care, the economy and education will be important issues during the election.

“There is an assault on public education,” said Tibbetts, whose father, G.W. Tibbetts, was president of the Georgia Association of Educators. “We’ve get to see what the changes to Certificate of Need will do.”

Scott, a proponent of CON reform, said Senate Bill 433, recently signed by Gov. Sonny Perdue, spelled the end of problems with CON, but demonstrated the difficulties legislators have in Atlanta.

“CON’s a big example of the influence of money,” Scott said. “It should be a simple thing to pass a bill that says any hospital in the state that wants to deliver babies can deliver babies.”

Scott’s latest campaign disclosure report shows he has $19,848 to spend on his campaign.

Tibbetts report showed he had $609. Hughes’ first report is due in July.

State Ethics Commission filings show Tibbetts has two reports still outstanding from his 2006 campaign against Scott, including a report due immediately after the November election.

“My hard drive crashed on me,” he said, adding that he’d been working with ethics commission staffers “about three months” to get the missing reports filed.

Also qualifying this week for Southwest Georgia House seats was Bob Hanner of Parrott. The 63-year-old incumbent Democrat showed $30,149 in his campaign coffers as of March 31 and was the only qualifier for the District 148 House race.

Also the only candidates to qualify for area House seats were Democrats Carol Fullerton, 58, for Albany’s District 151 House post and District 150 incument Winfred Dukes, 49, who showed $4,950 in campaign funds.

Republican incumbents Ed Rynders, 48, of Lee County and Jay Roberts, 38, of Ocilla also were the only candidates to qualify Thursday for their respective House seats.

Rynders has $98,319 and Roberts showed $69,676 in campaign funds.

Another former Sylvester official, Buddy Harden, already has $52,685 in contributions this year to go toward his campaign as a Republican for the House District 147 seat.

Harden, 67, Roy C. Gibbs, 54, and Carden Summers, 50, qualified this week to run for the seat relinquished by Johnny Floyd, who was recently named to the state transportation board.

After serving two terms as mayor of Sylvester in the 1980s, Harden, a pharmacist, sold his Sylvester drug store, moved to Cordele and served as head of the Georgia Association of Pharmacists for a decade.

“I have had a lot of opportunity in my life to become familiar with the legislative process,” Harden said. “As CEO of (the pharmacists’ association) I’ve gained experience that would be very good for the people of the 147th.”

The 147th District reaches from northern Worth County through Crisp and portions of Dooly almost to Houston’s county seat of Perry.

On Wednesday, Summers and Gibbs qualified to run for the District 147 post. Summers lost a 2004 bid against Joseph Carter of Tifton for the District 13 Senate seat.

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