GA Dem Congressional Candidate Vows To Stay In Race While Jailed For DUI

He has the Kennedy vote locked in.

Via WTOP:

A congressional candidate from Georgia says he’s ordering campaign signs and sending surrogates to meetings while he serves a jail sentence that could keep him locked up through Election Day.

Democrat Steve Foster of Dalton said in a jailhouse phone call to The Associated Press he has no intention to quit the race after a judge sentenced him Aug. 14 to spend six months in jail for a misdemeanor drunken driving conviction. The Nov. 6 election is just two months away.

“Look, I’m not withdrawing,” Foster said by phone Wednesday from the Catoosa County jail near the Georgia-Tennessee state line.

The 61-year-old former physician is the first Democrat since 2012 to challenge Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Graves in northwest Georgia’s 14th District. Even if he was free to campaign, Foster would be considered a longshot. Graves ran unopposed in his last two elections and won his last contested race with 73 percent of the vote.

Foster has rejected an editorial-page appeal from his hometown newspaper, the Daily Citizen-News of Dalton, to drop out of the race. Georgia law would allow the state Democratic Party to select a replacement candidate if Foster withdrew at least 60 days before the election. That window closes after Friday.

“Essentially what I’m doing here is we’re ordering yard signs, I’ve got people going to meetings, doing those kinds of things,” Foster said.

Foster said he might fare “perhaps even better” at the polls than previous Democrats who ran for Graves’ seat because of voters who feel he’s been treated unfairly.

“I put up $5,200 of my own money” to qualify for the House race, Foster said. “It’s my run. I know what the previous numbers were. I’d like to know what the numbers show even though they’ve got me in jail.”

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