The Associated Press
The Associated Press
ATLANTA — One of the candidates competing for Georgia's first open attorney general's seat in decades is an attorney who spent most of his career as a prosecutor. The other is a veteran civil attorney who spent eight years running one of the state's biggest counties.
Republican Sam Olens says the decisions he's made outside the courtroom help make him most qualified to become Georgia's top attorney. Democrat Ken Hodges counters that his background handling hundreds of cases in Georgia's courtrooms should put him over the top.
These two distinct story lines are converging in one of the most competitive down-ticket races in Georgia's frenzied 2010 election cycle in the race to succeed Attorney General Thurbert Baker, who launched an unsuccessful bid for governor.
Hodges is emphasizing his courtroom experience as the Dougherty County district attorney for 12 years. He said he's the only candidate who can make the difficult decisions on how to divvy up legal resources because he's the only candidate with a prosecutorial background.
"The job is to protect Georgians, and Sam doesn't have any experience doing so," Hodges said. "I'm a prosecutor, not a politician. My chief concern is — is the law constitutional and is it fair to people. And these are decisions I've been dealing with my entire career."
Olens, a civil litigator who chaired the Cobb County Commission from 2002 to 2010, contends his experience running the vast bureaucracy will give him the foundation to handle the attorney general's staff of 130 or so attorneys. And he said his grounding in metro Atlanta's most pressing concerns helped him prepare for the statewide post.
"Both of us have a lot of courtroom experience. But when you look at the issues — water, ethics, immigration — none of them are criminal," Olens said. "In Ken's campaigning, he's trying to change what the AG's office is. But it's not another district attorney's office."
Both Hodges and Olens had to survive separate trials to become their party's nominee.
Hodges soundly defeated state Rep. Rob Teilhet in an unusually fierce Democratic primary. Teilhet's camp ran an emotional attack ad featuring a grieving mother who claimed Hodges made mistakes in a case involving her son's death. Hodges countered that Teilhet exploited the victim for political gain, and many voters said they were turned off by the attack.
Olens had a tough fight of his own to earn the GOP nod. He emerged as the leading vote-getter in the three-way July contest, but he had to face an August runoff against state Sen. Preston Smith after none of the candidates managed to get more than 50 percent of the vote.
Olens fended off claims he wasn't conservative enough for the GOP nod by vowing to challenge President Barack Obama's health care overhaul in court and backing efforts to fine Georgia businesses who knowingly hire illegal immigrants.
After trouncing Smith in the runoff, Olens said his top priority is to jump headfirst into the decades-long fight with Alabama and Florida over water rights — an area he's more than familiar with as the former chair of the Atlanta Regional Commission.
"Number one on the list is water," he said. "And I'm the only candidate to have a firm grasp of the water issue."
Hodges said while he has little experience in dealing with Georgia's water woes — a federal judge has said he will limit Atlanta's use of its main water source in 2012 unless leaders reach a deal — he said a new look at the ongoing litigation will help break the logjam.
"I haven't had that issue before me, but it needs fresh eyes and a fresh approach," he said. "I have plenty of experience negotiating settlements and complex litigation. And I bring a keen interest in making sure this issue is resolved quickly. It will have my attention from day one."
Another flashpoint between the two centers on how aggressively they will contest Obama's health care reform. Hodges said that pursuing a "politically motivated lawsuit" challenging the overhaul is a waste of taxpayer dollars.
"Taking on a lawsuit that many leading scholars say is a losing battle is a waste," he said. "Facts and circumstances always change. And if it's in Georgia's interest to do it, I would. But with other states doing it, there's no reason to do it now. Georgia could win at no cost to the taxpayers."
Olens, though, said Georgia could have the chance to win certain concessions only if it has a stake in the fight.
"Either you agree with the principle or you don't," he said. "It's not a sincere argument to say, 'Others have done it, so why should we?'"
The hot-button issue that both candidates agree on, perhaps surprisingly, is a bid to revamp Georgia's capital punishment laws to allow the death penalty without a unanimous jury decision.
State law requires a unanimous jury of 12 to return a death sentence, but both candidates support measures to allow one when at least 10 jurors vote in favor of death.
Olens called it a tool to thwart "rogue jurors" who sneak on the jury despite being against capital punishment no matter the situation, while Hodges said he supports the move "as long as the legislation is constitutionally sound."
