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GEORGIA HOUSE DISTRICT 104

State legislature candidates chatting up constituents
Development one issue dividing GOP hopefuls GG

By GEORGE CHIDI
Published on: 07/03/06
The city councilman from Lawrenceville stood out among the crowd of Republican party faithful.

David Rodriguez joined the group at Wild Bill's last month in search of support for his bid to unseat State Rep. John Heard in the July 18 Republican primary. Most of the people who approached Rodriguez, a 38-year-old computer engineer and child of Cuban immigrants, wanted to know his views on a single issue: illegal immigration.

Many assumed that because he is Latino, he would take the side of the illegal immigrants. He doesn't.

Rodriguez says he's a die-hard conservative — a pro-life, fiscally conservative, Christian candidate — and that his views on border security are in line with the views of most Republicans. By the end of that June afternoon, Rodriguez had won the endorsement of Chris Simcox, the public face of the anti-illegal-immigration Minutemen, who started their own civilian border-patrol group.

"Lumping all Latino voters into one group is crazy," Rodriguez said later. While Rodriguez chatted up his party's core believers that Saturday afternoon, Heard, a two-term incumbent, zipped through Lawrenceville subdivisions on a Segway Human Transporter. "There aren't a lot of voters in my district at Wild Bill's," Heard said later.

Heard calls himself a conservative, too. He's been endorsed by Georgia Right to Life and touts his legislative experience as the reason voters should return him to the Capitol. But this year, as he rolls door to door in pursuit of votes, he, too, finds his constituents talking about illegal immigration. It's often the first topic a home-owner brings up after Heard appears in his or her driveway.

"We have to be just. We understand that we have to take care of the borders," Eduardo Torres, 64, a Republican retiree from Puerto Rico, told Heard one recent afternoon. "Emotionally, I'm Spanish, you know. But I want a rational solution."

When it comes to legislation on illegal immigration, Heard and Rodriguez don't differ all that much.

Heard voted for the Georgia Security and Immigration Compliance Act, an anti-illegal-immigration bill enacted this year by the Georgia Legislature. The law was designed to make it more difficult for employers to hire illegal immigrants. It also imposes tougher criminal penalties for human trafficking. Rodriguez says he, too, would have voted for the bill were he in office at the time it was proposed.

They agree in other areas, too. Both, for instance, support the proposal to start commuter rail service from Athens to Atlanta.

But they differ widely in other areas. Rodriguez thinks developers have too much power. Heard, a 51-year-old architect, thinks builders are too restricted by regulation.

Heard sold his architecture firm in 2001 and began pursuing politics after befriending a state senator from Savannah. He says the skills he learned negotiating with homeowners and government organizations as an architect transfer well to politics.

Rodriguez's political career started in 2002 with a fight against the city of Lawrence-ville. Rodriguez wanted to stop the construction of some apartments near his home and the annexation of a Wal-Mart site. He amassed a following of homeowners on his Web site, savelawrenceville.com.

When he challenged then-Councilman Sonny Brand for the 26-year incumbent's seat, his activist base became a voting base. His fellow council members elected him mayor pro tem this year, a largely ceremonial title requiring him to preside over council meetings when the mayor is absent.

Heard and Rodriguez butted heads on a different annexation plan earlier this year. Heard proposed the Legislature annex about 3,600 acres into Lawrenceville, an area roughly equal to all the land annexed by Gwinnett's cities since 2001.

Had the plan gone through, it would have increased Lawrenceville's size by about a third. Heard couldn't raise enough support from property owners and his fellow legislators to enact the annexation.

Annexations usually are handled by local governments, not the Legislature. Heard said he proposed the annexation after receiving a written request from Lawrenceville's City Council. Rodriguez signed the letter but now says he and other Council members were surprised by the request. And he says the whole process left a bad taste in his mouth. "I don't see a public reason for the annexation," Rodriguez said.

But Rodriguez said he decided to challenge Heard because of an inspections law authored by Heard earlier this year.

The law changed the rules for building-plan reviews and building inspections. The change allows builders to use a private inspector if a city or county planning department can't respond to a request for inspection within 30 days. The private inspectors can be engineers or architects, according to the law.

It also allows developers to use private building inspectors if an inspection request goes unanswered for two days, said Gwinnett Commissioner Mike Beaudreau. "It's a developer's and builder's dream," Beaudreau said. "If you're trying to speed up growth, that's the best way to do it."

Heard says the law was needed to fight corruption and to encourage local governments to be efficient. Rodriguez says it undercuts a local government's ability to do proper inspections and make sure buildings are safe.

That law hasn't drawn the sort of notice given the various immigration proposals. In fact, few people other than builders, homeowner activists or government officials seem to have noticed it.

But it's a law that sharply divides Rodriguez and Heard as they pursue Republican voters in Lawrenceville.