Pete McCommons

If Athens Forward had been in control here in 1801, when John Milledge and his committee rode in on horseback looking for a university site, they would have told Milledge, “Nah. We’re doing just fine with our grist mill and stuff down on the Oconee. Why don’t you boys ride on over to Watkinsville or Greensboro? We don’t want a woke college giving people funny ideas around here.” They’re still at it.

When a beloved citizen dies in a small town, everybody feels a personal sense of loss. If that citizen is “prominent,” the whole community is lessened. If the prominence derives at least in part from the citizen’s work as editor and publisher of the local newspaper, the town loses its collective voice and memory. So it is with the recent passing of Ralph B.

If you had any doubts regarding what the mayoral race is all about, the arrival of the “Official Athens-Clarke County Mayoral Guide” from “Athens Forward” should make it all clear. The same crowd that has been fighting progressive Athens and trying to take us backward to the 1950s is still up to their dirty tricks, and they have latched onto Dexter Fisher. There’s nothing official about this guide, of course, and it’s not a mayoral guide.