Via Tim Bryant:

“Athens Area Habitat for Humanity director Spencer Frye says he'll have an announcement one way or the other within the next two weeks on whether he is a candidate for Mayor. Frye has been considering a campaign to replace a term-limited Athens Mayor Heidi Davison.”

All signs point to Frye running, but the wait continues. At this point, I'm halfway expecting Pozzo and Lucky to stop by.

In other news, potential Commission District 1 candidate Sara Bickerton said her campaign is not official yet, but she is seriously considering running. Beyond the Trestle has a brief interview with her, and look for more info here as soon as I get the final word that she’s in.

Via Beyond the Trestle, a candidate announced for Athens-Clarke Commission today.

Sara Bickerton, 28, is program coordinator for the Athens Literacy Council and assistant program manager at the Jack R. Wells Boys & Girls Club. She has a master’s degree in public policy from the University of Georgia. Her Facebook page describes her political views as liberal/progressive. She is also listed as “special commandante for charitable outreach / sign making czar” in the Washington Street Liberation Army, a group of young political activists who describe themselves, tongue-in-cheek, as breaking the "Republican ... monopoly on fear-mongering, macho-posturing, and willful ignorance."

State Sen. David Shafer, R-Duluth, will not run for John Linder’s congressional seat, he said in an e-mail this afternoon.

“I will be doing everything in my power to help elect a strong, principled conservative to succeed John Linder in Congress,” Shafer said. “But I have determined that my public service is best performed here in Georgia, on the state level, near the ones I love.”

Shafer was set to run for lieutenant governor last year, but backed out after incumbent Casey Cagle decided to run for re-election rather than for governor.

U.S. Rep. Nathan Deal’s resignation could set up some truly mind-boggling circumstances for deciding who replaces him.

Deal’s resignation, effective March 8, will trigger a series of events involving Gov. Sonny Perdue setting a date for a special election. The law says:

"Whenever a vacancy shall occur or exist in the office of Representative in the United States Congress from this state the Governor shall issue, within ten days after the occurrence of such vacancy, a writ of election to the Secretary of State for a special election to fill such vacancy, which election shall be held on the date named in the writ, which shall not be less than 30 days after its issuance. Upon receiving the writ of election from the Governor, the Secretary of State shall then transmit the writ of election to the superintendent of each county involved and shall publish the call of the election."

Labor Commissioner Michael Thurmond is running for lieutenant governor, Flagpole publisher Pete McCommons says in his weekly column.

… I ran into Michael Thurmond and asked him if he’s going to run for lieutenant governor, and he said “yes.” I pushed him a little bit, and he still said “yes,” but “yes” usually means “I’m seriously considering it,” until the official announcement is made and it’s too late to back out.

McCommons is correct in saying that Thurmond should have run against Sen. Saxby Chambliss in 2008 because he probably would have won. He is also correct in noting that it’s time for Thurmond to, as the saying goes, $&!# or get off the pot. His name gets tossed around every time a higher office opens up, and he’s not getting any younger.

Looks like Carol Porter is Hillary Clinton on steroids.

Porter has scheduled a news conference for 11 a.m. Thursday at the state capitol. Matt Caseman, the spokesman for her husband, gubernatorial candidate and House Minority Leader DuBose Porter, sent out the announcement.

Caseman hasn’t returned a call asking what this is all about, but the only possible reason I can think of is that Carol Porter will say she’s running for lieutenant governor.

Some candidates – Bill Clinton and Sarah Palin, for example – rely heavily on their spouses for both political and policy advice. Never, though, have I heard of a husband and wife running together on a ticket.

This comes as no surprise, but Athens-Clarke Commissioner Kathy Hoard told blogger JMac that she is running for re-election this year.

Hoard, who has served on the commission since 2003 and previously served on the Athens City Council, had hinted that this would be her last term. After her husband died last year, though, she’s been hinting that she would return.

Defense attorney Bill Overend was poised to run if Hoard retired.

Bad to worse

Paulding County voters elected a young banker named Daniel Stout to replace former House Speaker Glenn Richardson, who resigned after news broke that he’d had an affair with a lobbyist.

Stout, 29, admits to sleeping with his first wife’s mother 10 years ago. They divorced, and he remarried in 2005.

DuBose and Carol Porter seem to really be serious about running on an unprecedented husband-and-wife ticket.

DuBose, the House minority leader from Dublin, is running for governor. His wife, Carol, filled in for him at a debate a couple weeks back – as candidates’ spouses are sometimes called on to do – and more than held her own. Her performance sparked talk of Carol running for lieutenant governor. No Democrats are contesting incumbent Casey Cagle.

Former Oglethorpe County Commissioner and perennial candidate Doug Bower announced today that he’ll run for state Senate District 47.

Bower, an Arnoldsville resident, ran unsuccessfully for Congress as a Democrat in 1992 and for state House as a Republican in 1994, 1996 and 1998. He was elected to the county commission in 2002 and served one term.

He dropped off a somewhat lengthy dead-tree news release this morning, so I’m not going to type the whole thing, but he quotes himself as saying:

An Insider Advantage poll released today (subscription only) shows that almost half of Republican voters haven’t decided who they’ll vote for for governor.

The poll shows Insurance Commissioner John Oxendine in the lead at 25 percent, followed by a statistical three-way tie between former Secretary of State Karen Handel (10 percent), U.S. Rep. Nathan Deal (9 percent) and former state Senate President Pro Tem Eric Johnson (7 percent). State Rep. Austin Scott and states’ rights activist Ray McBerry are spinning their wheels at 3 and 1 percent, respectively. State Sen. Jeff Chapman, R-Brunswick, was not included. Forty-five percent are undecided.