The Dade County Planet

Rick Breeden is thought well of at the Rising Fawn Hardware Store, said an audience member.  And how many people can say that?

Dade Commission Taps Breeden to Replace Goff in District 3

by Robin Ford Wallace

            At a brief meeting on Thursday called for the purpose, the Dade County Commission voted to appoint Rising Fawn’s Rick Breeden to fill the District 3 seat left vacant by Robert Goff, who resigned the commission last week in favor of a run for the Georgia House of Representatives. 

            “It’s a group decision,” said County Executive Chairman Ted Rumley.  “It’s not a one-person deal.”

            Rumley and the other sitting commissioners noted that the law allowed them only 15 calendars days from Goff’s resignation to fill the empty slot.  Thus they had been obliged to act as quickly as possible while at the same time satisfying Sunshine Law requirements for transparency.   

            “One thing I know,” said District 2 Commissioner Scottie Pittman.  “If you’re doing something that people aren’t happy with, the room’s going to be totally full.”  

            The room was not totally full.

            But the commissioners did solicit such public opinion as was on tap in the person of Wildwood’s Rex Harrison, who was among the scanty audience.  Harrison gave Breeden his blessing, pronouncing him “a good Christian man,” and opined:  “Well, they must have went down to Rising Fawn Hardware and gotten him from there.”

Breeden was generally esteemed at the hardware store, added Harrison, and added:  “If you want to know anything from that end of the county, that’d be the best place to go.”

Breeden, retired from a career as estimator for a fabrication company in Chattanooga, is currently a poultry farmer in Rising Fawn.  He has never sought elected office before.  “It sought me out,” he said.

Breeden said Rumley asked him on Sunday to accept the post.  “Let me mill it over through the night,” he replied.  In the morning he asked Rumley:  “Tell me a worst-case scenario that goes along with this job.”  Presumably Rumley did not describe a case bad enough to daunt his draftee because Breeden in the end accepted.

Breeden will serve out this year, after which the District 3 seat will be filled via a special election which will be appended to the general midterm election this November.  Breeden specified that he has no idea yet whether he’ll seek election to keep the job himself. 

“I’m not a politician but I can be a public servant,” he said.

robinfordwallace@tvn.net