The Savannah Daily News has made its endorsements for Congress in the 1st and 12th District. Their selections:

Bill Gillespie for the 1st District.

John Barrow for the 12th District.

This is the first time SDN has not endorsed Jack Kingston. The edorsement explains why:

……It is painful to no longer endorse our friend, Jack Kingston. Many of us know Jack and his family personally and cherish their friendship and their public service. Jack Kingston is a good man, personally, but he has never had a viable or credible Democratic opponent to truly consider.

And these times force us to step back, and take a hard look at his actual voting record on critical issues including fighting all measures to set a timeline to get out of Iraq, his failure to fight runaway Federal spending as a member of the House Appropriations committee that develops the budget, his leadership in defense of Tom Delay and President Bush as well as Republican party smear campaigns this election cycle, and his failure to file his personal financial disclosure information due last May 15 even though he was up for re-election. These votes and others lead us to believe that it is time for a change in 1st District representation.

Frankly, Jack began to lose our support last Feb. 27 when he appeared on the Dan Abrams show and said it was okay to “question Sen. Barack Obama’s patriotism because he doesn’t regularly wear an American flag lapel pin.”

Problem was, sitting there on the TV set with the cameras rolling, Jack wasn’t wearing a flag pin. These types of smear tactics are repugnant and demean elected officials in an era when voters are begging for straight talk on the issues versus old-style personal attack politics.

Yet, he continues to try to use such tactics, seeking to smear his opponent Bill Gillespie in this race, accusing him of lying about his educational degrees and other achievements, despite two news organizations having confirmed that Gillespie’s resume is accurate………

And its reasons for endorsing John Barrow are:

John Barrow deserves our support for another term as the Congressman from Georgia’s 12th District.

While his voting patterns may not be liberal enough for some in the 12th District, particularly in the Savannah area, his legal mind continues to serve us well, demonstrating a pattern of pulling apart legislation and voting on the quality of a bill and its intention versus just following a straight political party line.

He voted against the bailout bill because there was “too much downside for the taxpayer. There were specific areas of fraud and abuse that were skillfully manipulated out of the final product,” he says. That approach to in-depth study is what we depend on from our elected representatives.

And we must send representatives to Congress who will take tough stands on the legislative issues ahead for the 111th congress, issues in addition to current financial crisis matters. One of those issues for the 12th Congressional District is needed reform of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation, up for renewal in the next session. Improving public schools and developing a more qualified work force are seismic issues for the district.

Barrow shares our views, believing that NCLB was a good idea that “got hijacked from how it was designed. There is nothing wrong with standards, nothing wrong with being sure that Georgia is getting the same bang for its educational buck as Texas, but the Bush administration failed from the beginning to fund the bill, which is exactly what they promised they would not do if it was enacted,” he states. “So we’re raiding the local tax base to continue to fund federally mandated educational programs.” We couldn’t make these important points any more succinctly than John’s own words.

A 2008 study from the U.S. Department of Education, in the recently released “Reading First Impact Study: Interim Report,” states that the performance of students in 12 states who were in grades one to three during the 2004-5 and 2005-6 school years and completed the Reading First Program, a major billion dollar a year NCLB effort, had proven “ineffective.” A final report on the impacts from 2004-2007 (three school years with Reading First funding) and on the relationships between changes in instructional practice and student reading comprehension is expected in late 2008. It’s an issue ahead that needs tough analysis, and tough stands to ensure funding in a time when there will be little money to spare.

His opponent, John Stone (R), represents the old school party politics of big lobbyists and insider power players. He has spoken out on few issues in this campaign with the exception of his recent one-day media event in Savannah to propose his solution to the U.S. economic crisis, including ideas that cannot be enacted, such as imposing a moratorium on home mortgage foreclosures.

Barrow has high marks and endorsements from business organizations such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. And his position on immigration is realistic in light of the needs of Georgia and the 12th District. He supports securing the borders and enforcing the laws we have but without dramatic measures supported by many.

Most importantly, John Barrow is accessible and in the district often, spending endless weekends in its small towns, meeting face-to-face with voters, versus leaving all the constituent work to paid staffers.

John Barrow is a Blue Dog, fiscal conservative Democrat in an era when we’re all feeling pretty blue about the economy, and we need his take on the solutions