That was fast

It took less than 72 hours for the speaker of the Georgia House, one of the most powerful people in state politics, to be smashed, destroyed, and run out of office. Just like that, Glenn Richardson’s political career is finished.

It all started with the Monday evening edition of the local news on Fox 5, where Dale Russell interviewed Richardson’s divorced wife, Susan, in a segment that lasted more than seven minutes (which, in terms of the length of a typical TV news story, is almost the equivalent of “War and Peace”).

Susan Richardson alleged that her former husband had acted abusively towards her and she said he had attempted to commit suicide on Nov. 8 not because he was depressed, as Glenn Richardson contends, but because he was a bully who wanted to “control” her. For anyone who’s ever experienced a divorce or marital difficulties, it was painful to watch, but didn’t really justify kicking someone out of office.

But then Susan Richardson dropped the real bombshell: she confirmed to Russell that Glenn Richardson had an affair with an Atlanta Gas Light lobbyist in 2006 (which was one of the contributing factors in their divorce). That affair had been hinted at in an ethics complaint filed against Richardson by Bobby Kahn in January 2007, but Glenn’s cronies on a legislative review panel had dismissed the complaint without even bothering to hold a hearing on it.

When Susan Richardson confirmed that Glenn Richardson had indeed been involved with that lobbyist (and she produced 49 pages worth of emails to back up her statement), the floodgates were opened. Richardson, you see, had tried to get a bill through the General Assembly in 2006 that would have given Atlanta Gas Light a $300 million cross-state gas pipeline — actions he took while he was involved with an Atlanta Gas Light lobbyist.

From that point on, the pressure started to build among the rank-and-file House Republicans for Richardson to be booted as speaker. By 4 p.m. Thursday, Richardson was holding a conference call with the caucus to announce that he would resign (from the speakership and the Georgia House) on Jan. 1. Game over.

The House Republican leadership is obviously relieved that this festering boil was lanced before the General Assembly session convened in January. Now that Richardson is gone and will be replaced by Speaker Pro Tem Mark Burkhalter, they are hoping that the crisis is past and Republicans can get back to running the capitol.

They may be a little premature about their prospects for getting this genie back in the bottle.

The attorney general’s office is now looking into the matter to see if there might be any legal issues arising from a situation where a powerful elected official attempted to pass legislation that would have benefited the employer of his girlfriend. Richardson won’t have to worry about future ethics investigations because he won’t be a member of the General Assembly anymore after Jan. 1, but Attorney General Thurbert Baker could cause him a world of trouble.

The new speaker, Mark Burkhalter, is much friendlier and less abrasive than Richardson, but he has some issues of his own that could be subject to media scrutiny one day.

Let’s not forget that in July 1995, when Burkhalter was barely into his second term as a lawmaker, he was one of five House members who took part in a lobbyist-paid golf outing to the exclusive Melrose Club on Daufuskie Island, S.C. Four dancers from the Cheetah, an Atlanta topless nightclub, were also part of that weekend excursion at the invitation of lobbyist Rusty Kidd.

When the story of the Daufuskie junket broke in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the legislators and lobbyists said nothing out of the ordinary had happened. In fact, some of them claimed they never saw the dancers.

Kidd, whose 14-year-old son accompanied him on the trip, told an AJC reporter that the men spent most of their time playing golf and talking amongst themselves. “We literally sat there by ourselves, drinking whiskey, smoking cigars, overlooking the water,” Kidd said.

In one of those delightful ironies so often seen in Georgia politics, Kidd earlier this week was elected to the Georgia House in a special election in Milledgeville (he is replacing Bobby Parham, who now serves on the State Transportation Board).

Kidd will be sworn in as a new House member in January on the same day that Burkhalter picks up the gavel as the new speaker. It’s a small world after all.

The larger point here is that the Atlanta media may just dust off some of those Daufuskie Island stories, and possibly dig up some new ones as well, thus reinforcing the image of Republican legislators as a hard-drinking, hard-partying bunch. That’s a great image to have as you go into an election year where Georgians are electing a new governor, among other things.

The spillover doesn’t stop there. One of the legislators who cavalierly dismissed that ethics complaint against Richardson back in 2007 was a state senator named Eric Johnson — who’s running for the GOP nomination for governor. That’s an action that looks especially bad now because Susan Richardson, who’s certainly in a position to know, has confirmed the validity of the charges in that ethics complaint. Johnson is going to have some explaining to do when he’s out on the campaign trail.

Another Republican candidate for governor who might have reason to be a little nervous is Insurance Commissioner John “The Ox” Oxendine. Oxendine, like Richardson, has a divorce in his background and he may be called upon, at some point, to explain just why and how that divorce came to pass.

Richardson, as we can see, didn’t just give up the speakership. He may also have unleashed a media feeding frenzy that overtakes some of his Republican colleagues as well.