Georgia Tipsheet

Herman Cain’s improbable rise and ignominious collapse in the Republican presidential primary last year left him a man who appreciates what he has: a job.

In 2008, the former restaurant executive began hosting an eponymous radio show into which he parlayed some years later his presidential campaign. It was an inauspicious springboard to the White House, but it earned the conservative a throng indefatigable rabble-rousers.

Still, his charm and their loyalty were no match for claims of sexual harassment and infidelity. He surrendered the microphone to satisfy Federal Election Commission rules governing equal time and ended his campaign with nothing more than a mountain of debt and tainted national reputation.

But Cain remained widely popular back home in Georgia, where his old employer, WSB Radio in Atlanta, hired him to replace Neal Boortz, a fixture of conservative talk radio for the last two decades.

Cain said last year his “attention will be on exposing the economic pain and suffering to come from a second Obama term,” but news Friday that Sen. Saxby Chambliss would retire reignited speculation among Republicans in Georgia that Cain might reconsider.

But in multiple conversations Friday, GOP power brokers and party financiers told Tipsheet they believed Cain to be a “wild card” player in what most expect to become a wrenching, free-for-all primary to replace Chambliss.

Should Cain renege, he would again find himself in the same position as 2011: sacrificing his cushy radio gig for an uncertain and hostile campaign effort.

Boortz delivered his last broadcast on January 18 and Cain only assumed the microphone three days later, on Inauguration Day. He had only been on the air for five days before Chambliss announced his intentions to retire.

No, Herman Cain already has the jobs he wants.

- James Richardson

One-time Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain already wasted one talk radio gig with an unsuccessful bid for public office and he’s not about to squander a second, saying this week he had no intention of challenging Sen. Saxby Chambliss in the 2014 GOP primary contest.

“My attention will be on exposing the economic pain and suffering to come from a second Obama term, [rather] than on a decision Senator Chambliss made,” Cain said in an email to the Daily Caller. “No, I’m not running!”

Cain ran for the Republican Senate nod in 2004, squaring off with then-Congressmen Johnny Isakson and Mac Collins in the open primary contest. He placed second, with a 26-percent share of the vote, but Isakson’s majority margin precluded a runoff between the two.

He later landed a show on Atlanta talk radio station WSB, the nation’s largest radio broadcaster, in 2008 but left the microphone last year to pursue a bid for the White House.

He will rejoin WSB’s stable of conservative talkers early next year, however, with the retirement of nationally syndicated libertarian talker Neal Boortz, a fixture of Atlanta radio for nearly a half-century.

While Cain has nixed speculation about his own candidacy, another WSB host, Erick Erickson, said this week he was in “prayerful consideration” about a possible challenge to Chambliss.

- James Richardson

Herman Cain said Wednesday on a Christian conservative radio program that Republican part’s inability to shake its negative rap had made him a believer in third parties.

“I never thought that I would say this, and this is the first time publicly that I’ve said it: we need a third party to save this country,” the erstwhile GOP presidential hopeful told the American Family Association’s Brian Fischer, an incendiary social conservative radio talker. “We need a legitimate third party to challenge the current system that we have, because I don’t believe that the Republican party … has the ability to rebrand itself.”

Cain, whose campaign ended prematurely in the primary season amid allegations of extramarital affairs, has not said whether he would stage a second bid in 2016. “I never say never,” he said earlier this year.

But even vaguely broaching third parties–to say nothing of soliloquies explicitly pitching one–has long been anathema to establishment moneymen that make campaigns possible.

The Georgian has kept his profile afloat in the last few months with the aid of conservative media and a speaking tour of colleges and universities, though early next year he will assume the nationally syndicated radio slot that currently belongs to libertarian talker Neal Boortz.

- James Richardson

Herman Cain said Thursday in Florida that he would have built a “substantial lead” over President Barack Obama in opinion surveys were he the Republican nominee.

“The reason is quite simple,” Cain told reporters after an address to some 300 students at the University of Florida. “I have some depth to my ideas.”

The local paper that first reported the comments did not say whether the former candidate was pressed to explain the remark.

But back home in Georgia, where Cain is preparing to launch a new radio show, the notion that policy prescriptions like his widely-panned 9-9-9 plan were more profound than those floated by Mitt Romney triggered jeers.

“No candidate in the Republican race was less prepared for the intellectual rigors of the White House than Herman Cain,” one local Republican operative that worked for a competing campaign told Tipsheet. “Day one of a Cain administration would have been devoted to naming the nation’s envoy to Uzbeki-beki-beki-beki-stan, not rolling back the damage of the last four years through actually-intelligent proposals.”

- James Richardson

An erstwhile Peach State presidential contender and the co-founder of The Home Depot have launched a national initiative to build support for conservative economic and labor policies, embarking next month on a thirty-day tour of mostly battleground states to redress the influence of labor unions.

Georgians Herman Cain and Bernie Marcus, both one-time business executives, unveiled “Job Creator Solutions” last month as a resource on candidate positions and wages and benefits discussions for employers.

“Bernie Marcus and I both know first-hand how important it is to have the facts when making business decisions,” Cain said in a release. “We also know it is just as important for Americans to have the facts when making decisions that will impact our communities, businesses and our nation. This is why I’m proud to join forces with Bernie for the Truth Tour.”

The effort will go into full swing next month, at the height of Democratic National Convention wherein President Barack Obama will be renominated, and run until the week of the general election this fall.

The thirty-city tour will be marked by triple-headers, a trio of events on each day tailored to distinct groups.

The day will begin with a politics and pancakes appeal to faith-based and community leaders. By midday Cain and Marcus will be stumping for the support of business owners on the issues of taxation, health insurance and energy.

The whistle stop will end daily on a new college campus, lamenting the state of the economy to those nearing their entry into the workforce. (More than half college graduates under 25 were unemployed or underemployed; many more still were not included in labor statistics, having left the workforce entirely.)

A full schedule of events–which contains no events skedded in Georgia, though a graphic on the group’s website shows appearances in Atlanta and Athens–is available here.

- James Richardson

The finally volleys in the Republican primary contest in a new north Georgia congressional district have dovetailed on one familiar refrain: my opponent lies, mostly about me.

State Rep. Doug Collins blanketed the ninth district this week with a new mailer torching rival Martha Zoller as smear monger compensating for moderate positions on abortion, taxes and civil unions for gays and lesbians.

“[S]he’s now saying things about Republican Doug Collins’ record as Governor Deal’s floor leader that simply aren’t true,” the reverse of the new mailer reads. “But shouldn’t Martha spend less time smearing her opponent and more time explaining her own zany views?”

Zoller’s responded in kind on Friday, tapping Herman Cain to record a new robo-call in which the former presidential hopeful levels the mailer as an establishment attack on a “shake-up-the-status-quo-conservative.”

“You see the establishment is scared of Martha Zoller, and they should be,” Cain, who endorsed the conservative radio talker-turned-pol in January, says in the tape. “It showed today from her opponent, Doug Collins, who launched a false, negative attack against her. Apparently, they think we are stupid.”

Cain closes the recording with a plug for Zoller’s new microsite, CollinsLies.com, that challenges the negative statements made by her rival.

The fact-checking website dissect seven accusations–support for abortion, gay marriage and drug legalization, among others–that taken in sum by party faithful would render the firebrand a rather moderate breed.

But little more than two weeks removed from the state’s primary election, voters will soon determine which of the pair’s lies are more egregious.

UPDATE: Collins has launched a complimentary digital component to the “zany” offensive, featuring nearly a dozen video clips of then-commentator Zoller at SeeMarthaSayIt.com.

- James Richardson

While blitzing the cable networks with promotional plugs for his new online television venture, Herman Cain indadvertedly dated the birth of conservative network to sometime during his presidential campaign.*

Cain said last week that his stable of contributors fell by one with the sudden death of Lewis Brown, a one-time basketball prodigy who had become homeless in Los Angeles in the years since his college days.

Cain told CNN he learned of the eccentric homeless-man-on-the-street personality’s death when a film crew went to record new segments last week, finding instead they were too late. He “passed away just last week, unexpectedly,” he said.

Except Brown passed in September 2011. He even notched an obit from New York Times political scribe Adam Nagourney (who also had a lengthy profile of the faded hotshot in May of that year.)

When CNN belatedly caught the error on Sunday, a CainTV spox told the network: “in retrospect we regret that we did not keep in touch with Brown on a more regular basis.”

For Tipsheet, though, the most interesting aspect of the goof is not the error itself, rather the apparent admission that Cain was building a conservative television network even as he eyed the White House.

Brown’s death came more than ten months ago and yet Cain’s crew had filmed three episodes of “Street Smarts.” The pizza executive-turned-conservative radio talker only ended his presidential bid in December, at least four month’s after Brown’s latest street dispatch.

Three episodes of “Street Smarts,” including one on the Middle East, are still available on CainTV’s website.

UPDATE: Tipsheet speculation squashed: Mediaite dug into the curious case of Brown to find the entire CainTV series had been recycled from an earlier program by Sameul “Joe the Plumber” Wurzelbacher on the Kelsey Grammer-fronted RightNetwork.

Both CainTV and and Wurzelbacher’s show share the same producer, Chris Burgard.

- James Richardson

Former Georgia Republican presidential hopeful Herman Cain debuted on Wednesday a new internet television channel designed to blend political news and entertainment programming.

The result: “Intertainment.”

“If you read and listen to the news or watch the talking heads on TV, you simply have to come to the conclusion that politicians and their friends in the press must think the rest of us are stupid,” the new website of CainTV says. “Mr. Herman Cain is here to point out the craziness and lengths these folks will go to.”

Slated programming for Cain’s new venture includes documentaries (on the U.S.-Mexico border), comedies, family-friendly animation and man-on-the-street civics tutoring.

His campaign for the White House now over, Cain’s dance card has rapidly filled up once more. Just last month he was named as the replacement for Atlanta conservative radio talker Neal Boortz.

- James Richardson

Conservative radio talker Neal Boortz announced on Monday his intentions retire in January after four decades behind the microphone, yielding his three-hour show to ex-Republican presidential hopeful Herman Cain.

But before Boortz could break the news to listeners today, he was preempted by station execs at Atlanta’s WSB, whose syndication of the program reaches more than 6 million.

“Today, national radio talk show host Neal Boortz announced live on his program that he’s retiring from his daily show and passing the torch to his friend and colleague, Herman Cain,” a morning release by WBS read. “His last day hosting The Neal Boortz Show … will be January 18, 2013.”

That release, though belatedly time-stamped at 10:07AM, was floated even before the station began beaming Boortz across the air at 8:30AM, by which time at least one conservative Georgia blog had already caught the news.

Boortz himself posted on his blog a lengthy farewell note to fans and listeners. “It’s finally the right time to put away the headphones,” he said in this morning’s broadcast.

Cain’s return to WSB is the latest reshuffling of the station’s commentators.

When he left last year to launch his bid for the White House, RedState’s Erick Erickson, then only a recently-hired contributor to the station, was promoted from his late evening hour-long broadcast to the two-hour drive-time slot formerly held by Cain.

- James Richardson

A former spokesman on the presidential campaign of Herman Cain has been tapped by the communications shop of Rep. Tom Price, the Georgia congressman’s office announced Monday.

Ellen Carmichael, who amicably split from Cain’s operation in October, will serve as dually as press secretary for Price and the Republican Policy Committee, which the suburban Atlanta GOP’er steers.

“Ellen brings a wealth of experience, as well as the kind of creativity and enthusiasm essential to advancing the work we do at the House Republican Policy Committee,” Rep. Price is quoted in today’s release. “As we expand our communications operation, Ellen will be an important liaison for the media on behalf of our office and a tireless advocate for our policy efforts.”

- James Richardson