• Mark Taylor wins the primary over Cathy Cox. Now he’s got a bigger fight: unseating an incumbent whose approval ratings are not that bad.
• Ralph Reed loses. As it turns out, at least a bare majority (56%) of Georgia’s Republican voters are not that nuts. Or, perhaps there were enough “crossover” votes from moderates who would barf over the prospect of Lt. Gov. Ralph.
• We can essentially thank the Newslady for running the Lt. Gov. Dem. pri. to an R-O.
• Democrats put the red light on Reddy. Hailed in the press for being smart, he was apparently not smart enough to knock on doors and connect with average voters.
• In Sen. District 17, John Douglas is vulnerable. His was the only uncontested race to not get 100% of the vote, as far as I can tell. You heard that right. As of right now, with 92% of precincts reporting, John Douglas received 7,323, or 79.7%, of the vote in an uncontested primary. Perhaps that has something to do with his support for the tax on commerce. It would be reassuring to know that Republicans aren’t that nuts to re-elect a Boortz clone. We can really thank Mike Crotts, who lost his fight to actually appear on the ballot. Still, there is a Democrat in the race, Silvia Delamar. Given the numbers (his 7,323 votes, versus Silvia’s 5,585), it’s unlikely Douglas is all that vulnerable.

Speaking of D vs. R primary numbers, there are a couple worth pondering:

• Jill Chambers-R received 597 votes, versus Bob Roche-D’s 1,166. I still wouldn’t underestimate her vote-getting abilities by any means.
• With 97% of precincts reporting, the Republican Gov. primary recorded 416,749 votes, versus 477,771 in the Democratic primary. That’s a difference of more than 60,000 votes. Still, I wouldn’t take that as much of a good sign for Taylor. Still, the Republican Lt. Gov. primary got even fewer total votes — 404,310.

Meanwhile, in Cobb County:

• Helen Goreham’s seat was the only contested seat up for the Cobb County Commission. Apparently, five candidates thought she was vulnerable. She wasn’t. If anything is uniting West Cobb at the moment, it’s the fight against traffic and the effects of sprawl.
• I watched a debate recently that included School Board candidates from Districts 4 and 6. In District 4, John Abraham and Chris Callaghan competed against one another. At one point, Abraham suggested it would be a good idea to move bus stops further away from the kids so that the kids would get more exercise. Honestly, it was the only nutty-sounding idea he had. Overall, Abraham was all positive. Callaghan, meanwhile, sounded something like:
  

  blah blah blah family values blah blah blah John Abraham is really a Democrat blah blah blah I’m an asshole blah blah blah Christian blah blah blah Conservative blah blah blah bully blah blah blah.

  Abraham won.

• In District 6, Cobb School Board Chair Kathie Johnstone was clearly vulnerable, and she had three opponents to offer her that challenge. Kathie somehow had the dubious honor of presiding over a School Board that could do nothing right — laptops, ethics and biology, oh my! With a record of wasting money and making a concerted effort to deprive children of a quality science education, the entire School Board should be vulnerable. Despite that, biology was never a subject brought up in the debates I saw. John Crooks, a Baptist minister, will be going against Kathie in the runoff election. On this issue, everyone seems to skirt the issue.
• The AJC had endorsed John “Eviction Notice” Wiles only because he had weak opposition, not because he was a strong candidate. I expected the weak candidate to get less than 20% of the vote, but Andy “one-issue, and that’s property rights” Rice got 22% of the vote. Could Northwest Cobb do any worse?
• Andy’s wife, Taffy, ran against Earl Ehrhart and got nearly 21% of the vote.