Rumors have it that Tuesday's special election for voters of Cobb County to decide pro- or con- on Cobb County's 1% Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax was almost FUBARed by the Democrat consultants hired to ensure the measure passed.

As it stands now, with all votes counted but military ballots and absentees, the pro-SPLOST contingent leads by 117 votes in a 40,000 total vote turnout.

The pro-SPLOST group, Citizens for Cobb, consisting of a bunch of business people with ZERO political acumen, were dazzled earlier this year by the presentation from a political consultant named Billy Linville of Linville & Associates, and hired Linville to promote a win in favor of the SPLOST.

Why were they dazzled? Well, Linville was the one behind the win last year in the City of Atlanta's 1% sales tax SPLOST to repair their sewer system. So, the folks in Citizens for Cobb figured "Hey, he won there by a large margin, so we should put him in charge of our project here..."

Why is this line of logic so flawed? Because the voters in the City of Atlanta are a VASTLY different set of voters from the voters of Cobb County. The bulk of the voters in Cobb are of a conservative bent when it comes to fiscal issues and taxes. The bulk of the voters of the City of Atlanta are primarily liberal when it comes to, well, just about any subject. But, especially when it comes to spending money, it's a free-for-all. ("Gee, Wally, uh, what political party has continuously held the Atlanta mayor's office and the Atlanta city council for the past 30 years? Gee, Beaver, uhhh, ummm...I don't know, I live in Cobb and I don't follow what they do in Atlanta...").

Billy Linville has been nothing but a Democrat operative/consultant for the last 10 years. So, hiring a Democrat consultant for a Cobb County measure was a) assinine to start with because Democrats have been losing up-and-down the state for the past 3 years and, clearly, Democrat consultants have been a part of that problem, and b) highly risky due to the ineptitude of a Democrat beng able to communicate anything positive to a Republican-dominated county.

A last minute tactic from the anti-SPLOST contingent involved sending- out recorded phone calls to Republican voters in opposition to the SPLOST. The phone call contractor was hired by the anti-SPLOST group, Cobb County Taxpayers Association, to send out a call on Monday and a call on Tuesday in opposition to the vote.

In answer to this, Linville had the (cough-cough!) "brilliant" idea to have former governor Roy Barnes cut a phone message and send it out to a list Linville had and Barnes' voice was sent out over the phone lines on Tuesday.

However, the phone list Linville used was chock-full of Republican voters...voters who have had their phone numbers for 2-10 years. Voters who either a) were going to ignore the vote and not go to the polls at all, OR b) were in favor of the SPLOST already. But, when both of these types of Republicans heard Roy Barnes' voice on a call-out urging them to support the SPLOST, the Republicans turned on a dime and went out to vote AGAINST the SPLOST.

As we said, 117 votes currently separate the YES from the NO...a few more phone calls from Roy Barnes to Republicans would have probably turned the tide the other way.

On a non-related subject, last night at 7:03 PM, WSB Radio reported that the pro-SPLOST vote was winning by a 4-to-1 margin in their exit polling. Obviously, their exit pollster was the same guy in charge of calling the 2004 election for Kerry...because the actual vote count was never beyond the 53%-47% margin with both sides flipping back-and-forth as each precinct rolled-in results...

PV Just Chuckles: Great move, Billy. Really. We know that Ralph Reed is looking for a consultant now. Can you go knock on his door and make a presentation?