Steve Brown: Fayette's comeback kid

The election results are in. Everybody at the office is talking about the man who picked himself up from past political defeat and won a convincing victory Tuesday.

And no, we're not discussing Roy Barnes.

Steve Brown is Fayette's version of the comeback kid. Just a few years after voters swept him out of the office of mayor of Peachtree City and then blocked his attempt to represent the county in the Georgia General Assembly, Brown has managed to unseat once popular Commission Chairman Jack Smith on Fayette's most powerful local governing authority.

Turnout was fairly low, as expected, but Brown bested the incumbent by nearly 1,000 votes.

So how did Brown do it? I don't claim to have all of the answers, but I will offer a few theories. First off, it's been several years since Brown held office. In this race, Smith was the clear incumbent / establishment candidate. Usually incumbency is a great asset, but in the era of the Tea Party, it has grown into a burden -- just ask Cyndi Plunkett and Steve Boone over in Peachtree City.

Secondly, Brown successfully attached Smith to the most unpopular local public works project in recent memory. The West Fayetteville Bypass was not Smith's brainchild. He did not divert funds from elsewhere to build it. But he did not stop its construction and that probably hurt him with some voters.

The overwhelming rejection of the SPLOST renewal in 2009 was as close to a referendum on the bypass as we're going to see. Tuesday's vote was in some ways round two of the bypass referendum.

Another factor that may have helped Brown was his decision to go negative early and often. As a regular columnist on the 'anything goes' editorial pages and blogs of Fayette's other newspaper, Brown attacked the bypass project for months before he jumped into the race. He railed against public transportation coming to Fayette -- managing to link that concept with Smith's work on the Atlanta Regional Commission. And he attacked Smith for being a board member of a local bank.

The repetition may have worked, but the key was Brown's choice of angles of attack. He went after an extremely unpopular road project, banks (think Wall Street) and MARTA.

Can you think of three things the average Fayette voter dislikes more than the West Fayetteville Bypass, Wall Street bailouts and the idea of having a MARTA bus terminal in Peachtree City?

By choosing the right buttons to push, Brown had people agreeing with him. It then became easier for folks to forget about the reasons why they voted against him in the past.

And it also helped that Smith is not comfortable as a campaigner. He hesitated to respond to Brown's attacks. He kept his advertisements positive. When he finally did come out swinging to defend himself, it may have been too late.

Smith failed to fully embrace the bypass. I can't say if that was a good move or not.

I, for one, see a need for the road. Fayette must establish a conduit for new growth. Without some steady, controlled residential growth, we're going to turn into a high-tax retirement community. But, Smith never described the bypass as a 'Central Parkway for future growth' as Fayetteville Mayor Ken Steele has called it. (Brown also uses the term 'Central Parkway'. He has said he sees no problem with the road being built, but he does not want taxpayer money funding it. He believes it should be modeled after Peachtree Parkway, wherein subdivision developers pay for the road once the economy picks up).

Smith was very popular two years ago. In 2008, voters gave his team a stamp of approval by electing three commissioners with similar ideas and platforms.

Just two years ago, the Harold Bost / Greg Dunn / Peter Pfieffer branch of the local Republican Party looked like it had been supplanted for good.

But then the Tea Parties and their anti-incumbent fervor took hold in Fayette. Construction began on the bypass. A County Commissioner was arrested for possession of marijuana and remained on the board.

Suddenly, it became much harder to get credit for navigating the county through a painful recession without raising taxes or drastically cutting services.

Brown took advantage of the right situation and played his cards superbly. Voters have awarded him with another chance -- something that seemed very unlikely just a few years ago.

I look forward to working with Steve Brown, and I hope he excels in his new role.

At the same time, I have really enjoyed working with Jack Smith and I'm thankful for his years of service. Like both Brown and Smith, I just want what's best for Fayette County. Let's see where things go from here...