ROCK SPRING, Ga. — At the start of Monday night’s candidate forum at the Walker County Civic Center, there was only one candidate on hand to speak to about 25 people in attendance.

Facilitator Charles Lusk said at the opening of the forum that he realized the event, sponsored by the Walker County Chamber of Commerce, was scheduled with rather short notice, but that they were appreciative for those citizens and candidates that were able to come.

Chamber of Commerce president Stacy Mauer said that regardless of turnout, the event is important, perhaps even more so in an apathetic voting environment.

“We felt it was our responsibility to provide (the forum), and those candidates that want to take advantage of it can, and if they can’t, then I understand and respect that.”

Bruce Coker, the Democratic nominee for state Senate District 53, was the first to arrive and speak. “This is new for me — I’ve never stood before a group of people in a forum without any other candidates here,” he said.

Opening round

In the three minutes allotted to each candidate for opening statements, Coker offered up some points on his background and the reasons why he was running.

Issues at the crux of his opening address were his experience in law enforcement and the desire to provide his constituents with all-access representation while working to give them more power than the lobbyists at the state Capitol.

“It seems that lobbyists and special interests control the tone and the mood in Atlanta, and it’s less about the local constituents, and to me that’s wrong,” Coker said.

By the time Coker had finished, a few more citizens had trickled in. Coker’s rival, incumbent, Republican Sen. Jeff Mullis of Chickamauga, informed Chamber staff last week that he could not attend because he was committed to a previous campaign engagement in Dade County.

Incumbent Republican Martin Scott and his opponent for the state House District 2 seat, Democrat Sadie Morgan, were also absent from the event.

After Coker, two Republican candidates arrived to participate in the forum, but that would be the extent of politicians for the evening.

State Rep. Jay Neal, who is running unopposed for his House District 1 seat, spoke next, while Brent Brown, running for commissioner of labor against Democrat incumbent Mike Thurmond, sat waiting in the wings.

In his three minutes Neal gave a brief synopsis of what the Georgia General Assembly had accomplished in the past two sessions that he has been a part of.

He said that after the 9-11 attacks every state in the country began to face hard economic times. “I don’t think we realized fully just how much we were being impacted until following the election of 2002,” Neal said, “Governor Perdue inherited a nearly $1 billion deficit four years ago, and we closed out this past fiscal year with a half-billion dollar surplus.”

Neal pointed out that Georgia high school SAT scores have improved to their highest level in the state’s history, from 50th to 46th. He also noted that the Republican-controlled General Assembly passed tough legislation on sexual predators as well as an eminent domain bill protecting property owners.

In his three minutes Brown spoke quickly to get in as much of his message of challenging the status quo of the current Georgia Department of Labor administration.

“We have a labor department today that is reactive, not proactive. It is solely the department of unemployment, and that’s got to change,” he said.

One of the chief planks in Brown’s platform is to provide for the state labor commissioner to have a permanent seat on the state Board of Education. “It wouldn’t cost the taxpayers anything, and it’s one place where the leader of the labor department needs to be, because jobs and education go hand in hand.”

Qs & As

The next segment of the forum consisted of questions from the audience, submitted to Lusk on small pieces of paper, who then read them to the candidates, who were allotted two minutes to reply to each.

Lusk combined questions of similar nature, and asked that people avoid obvious partisan statements and stick with questions on specific issues. Several questions came from staunch supporters of either Mullis or Coker standing at the back of the room.

Questioning started with Coker, who received by far the most questions for the evening: “When the Democratic Party approached you to run against Sen. Mullis, was the purpose of your campaign to trash him and other leaders? Why can’t you just campaign about what you can do for the people rather than how bad someone else may have done?”

Coker responded by saying that was what competition in elections was all about. “If I didn’t have anything to talk about my opponent, I wouldn’t have anything to run against,” he said. “I’m sure this gentleman right here has something to say about his opponent,” Coker continued, pointing to Brown and also supposing the same of Neal if he had an opponent. “Folks, there’s no getting around that.”

Rep. Neal also had to field a partisan question, this time in defense of fellow Republican Mullis. The question was regarding whether he thought it was right for Sen. Mullis to not take leave from his job with Walker County during the legislative session.

Neal answered by drawing an analogy to his own former position as a school bus driver. “I got off every summer, and my pay was pro-rated and drawn out over twelve months.”

Neal said he believed that if you looked at the salary of Mullis’ equivalent in Catoosa County, it would show his salary at about 75 percent of that. “So I think it would be a fair argument for him to make that he is taking that three months without pay and that it’s being pro-rated out over a 12-month period.”