Local politics, the county, and the world, as viewed by Tammy Maygra
Tammy's views are her own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Bill Eagle, his pastor, Tammy's neighbors, Earl Fisher, Betsy Johnson, Joe Corsiglia, President Obama, Tony Hyde, Pat Robertson, Debi Corsiglia's dog, or Claudia Eagle's Cats. This Tammy's Take (with the exception of this disclaimer) is not paid for or written by, or reviewed by anyone but Tammy and she refuses to be bullied by anyone.

The primary in Columbia County was going to be a regular boring and uneventful Election Day. That was until Wayne Mayo threw his hat into the ring for county Commissioner against seasoned politician Henry Heimuller. Many of the political junkies thought that the commissioners race would be a given and Henry would win by a pretty big margin.  They were completely wrong. Wayne came in behind Henry in a very close margin. Neither candidate received the needed 50% plus 1 vote to ax the other candidate off the ballot for the general election. Henry failed to reach his goal by 15 votes. What a surprise. The Heimuller camp was throwing an election party and was celebrating their win that evening but when the final votes were counted Henry failed to get enough votes to win. OOPS!

Now these two candidates with two completely different views will go into the fall general with a much contested race. Now here is the dilemma, do we want a seasoned politician with Henry who receives campaign contributions from a good percentage of the corporations that do business in Columbia County, for example, P&W rail, BNSF rail and   Global Partners the crude oil people, a politician who is in the good ole boys network with the usual suspects? Or do we want a politician who receives little campaign money from corporations and uses the same campaign signs year after year and actually goes door to door himself and with volunteers.

Henry is a pleasant person with a decent personality, is friendly and comes across in a good manner. But he forgets that he is working for the people, for instance on the crude oil issue, he voted against his own planning commission decision and against what the majority of the people wanted. In my opinion he has failed as county commissioner on this extremely huge issue, when you don't take a stand for the people it is time to go, or you certainly need a wakeup call and that is what Mayo gave Heimuller.

As for Mayo I do not agree with many of his remarks- promising the people money from the depletion fee to fund the jail, well Wayne that takes a majority vote by the three commissioners which you would probably not have the votes to place it on the ballot, and that ordinance was created to fix the roads because of the heavy hauling of aggregate and needs to stay for the road department. Secondly the hospital issue, the current CHD board are handling the problem-they are doing what the people wanted. They are still in court and are still paying the fees associated with that litigation their selves with the free services of local attorney Jim Huffman., they are the ones that got the signatures to take down the special district and are the ones who did all the grunt work on the issue, and are working diligently on behalf of the people in the CHD district not you.

Wayne needs to educate himself on many issues that are affecting the county every day; he needs to learn urban renewal, enterprise Zones to name a few issues which he has not done. But in Wayne's defense he has said openly and honestly that he does not know what these tax abatement programs are. He should know basic county programs.

So here we go into the fall election, each candidate has a few summer months to educate themselves on important issues that affect the taxpayers of the county, and each will be ramping up their campaigns and going door to door. One will run on past experience and will stand by all his decisions that he has made. The other will say that we need change and this will be what he will do.
All I can say is that it will be an interesting race never the less. There will be more people voting in the general election whether that is good or bad who knows. Each candidate will have their work cut out for them and may the best man win. The only suggestion that I have is Heimuller may not want to celebrate before all the votes are in.