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While Nathan Deal and Karen Handel fight over abortion and teh gayz, there is another battle getting very nasty that you may not be aware of:

The Hudgens/Sheffield battle for Insurance Commissioner.

Both Hudgens and Sheffield are trying to put the noose of The Ox around the other’s neck. Both have been tied to him at various points – Sheffield as a lawyer and lobbyist for the Insurance Department, Hudgens as the Chair of the Senate Insurance Committee, where Ox was a frequent speaker.

Both have donors who have supported Ox in both his Insurance Commissioner and Governor races, though Hudgens has the support of Ox’s Assistant Commissioner and was the only candidate of these two to receive money from John Oxendine himself. The money in question here was $500 to Hudgens’ State Senate account in 2008, a year before Hudgens filed to run to replace Ox, from Ox’s Better Georgia PAC.

Sheffield has the endorsement of defeated foes Seth Harp, Rick Collum, and Stephen Northington, who placed 6th, 7th, and 9th and brought in a combined 98,997 votes last week.

Hudgens has the endorsements of defeated foes Tom Knox and Gerry Purcell, who placed 3rd and 4th and brought in a combined 164,088 votes last week.

Sheffield is running a passive-aggressive “positive” campaign (in that she keeps emphasizing that she is the “positive” candidate, thereby saying that her opponent is the “negative” candidate – which is in itself a negative attack, just in a passive-aggressive manner).

Meanwhile, Purcell appears to be attacking Sheffield for doing her job, tweeting yesterday that

If u r running 4 INS Commish & n runoff, the last place u should be is at the Dept. lobbying 4 a client 2 obtain a license-unseemly!

For those who are unaware, Sheffield is a lawyer whose clients include many in the insurance industry. She is actively working at her job as well as being a candidate for Insurance Commissioner, so it is not surprising to me that she would be seen actively working her day job. My question is: Why haven’t other candidates been caught at their day job?

But hey, this is all over in 13 more days. Then we can settle down and watch petty Party politics – including the expected “wasted vote” and fear-based arguments against the Libertarian Party of Georgia’s candidates that have already been surfacing. More on that later though.

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