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Richmond Hill Realtor makes bid for Congress
Tavio seeking Kingstons seat as a Democrat
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Amy Tavio

Richmond Hill Realtor Amy Tavio was a driving force in reorganizing the local Democratic Party and has long worked behind the scenes on local issues.

Now, the divorced mother of three who has never held political office hopes what she calls her search for “common sense, common ground” solutions for problems facing Georgians will convince residents of the 1st Congressional District to vote for her, regardless of their party affiliation.

Tavio announced earlier this week her candidacy as a Democrat, saying she’s running because “politics as usual isn’t working in D.C.”

“We’ve got career politicians on both sides that have dug their feet in and they’ve said they’re not willing to work together,” she said. “They’re not even being civil and respectful to one another. And those who are suffering with all of that playing out in Washington are the people here at home.”

Tavio said her own experiences as a real estate agent and small businesswoman, along with a number of conversations with friends who encouraged her to run, convinced her it was time to do something.

“I’ve witnessed our inability to work together in a number of ways. As a Realtor, sitting at kitchen tables with a box of tissues with a family trying to figure out how to get out from under a mortgage they’re upside down on so they can go someplace else where they’ve got a job opportunity,” she said. “I’ve noticed it with families trying to figure out how they’re going to pay their children’s medical bills and put food on the table at the same time.

“I’ve seen children moving back home because they can’t get a job after graduating from college and they’ve done everything right,” she added. “I’ve seen small businesses trying to keep their doors open, only to have the government shut down for three weeks and all of a sudden nobody walks into their restaurant anymore. It’s crazy. It doesn’t work and it doesn’t serve anyone.”

Tavio is the second Democrat to announce plans to run for the seat, which has been held by Republican Jack Kingston since he was elected in 1993. Kingston is running for Senate.

Earlier, Savannah’s Lesli Messenger also went public with her candidacy. There are six Republican candidates running, including state Sen. Buddy Carter of Pooler, former state Sen. Jeff Chapman of Brunswick, Bob Johnson, a surgeon and former Army ranger, businessman John McCallum of St. Simons, and Darwin Carter, a consultant from Bacon County who worked in the administration of former president Ronald Reagan.

Read more in the Jan. 18 edition of the News.

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Later yall, its been fun
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This is among the last pieces I’ll ever write for the Bryan County News.

Friday is my last day with the paper, and come June 1 I’m headed back to my native Michigan.

I moved here in 2015 from the Great Lake State due to my wife’s job. It’s amicable, but she has since moved on to a different life in a different state, and it’s time for me to do the same.

My son Thomas, an RHHS grad as of Saturday, also is headed back to Michigan to play basketball for a small school near Ann Arbor called Concordia University. My daughter, Erin, is in law school at University of Toledo. She had already begun her college volleyball career at Lourdes University in Ohio when we moved down here and had no desire to leave the Midwest.

With both of them and the rest of my family up north, there’s no reason for me to stay here. I haven’t missed winter one bit, but I’m sure I won’t miss the sand gnats, either.

Shortly after we arrived here in 2015, I got a job in communications with a certain art school in Savannah for a few short months. It was both personally and professionally toxic and I’ll leave it at that.

In March 2016 I signed on with the Bryan County News as assistant editor and I’ve loved every minute of it. My “first” newspaper career, in the late 80s and early 90s, was great. But when I left it to work in politics and later with a free-market think tank, I never pictured myself as an ink-stained wretch again.

Like they say, never say never.

During my time here at the News, I’ve covered everything that came along. That’s one big difference between working for a weekly as opposed to a daily paper. Reporters at a daily paper have a “beat” to cover. At a weekly paper like this, you cover … life. Sports, features, government meetings, crime, fundraisers, parades, festivals, successes, failures and everything in between. Oh, and hurricanes. Two of them. I’ll take a winter blizzard over that any day.

Along the way I’ve met a lot of great people. Volunteers, business owners, pastors, students, athletes, teachers, coaches, co-workers, first responders, veterans, soldiers and yes, even some politicians.

And I learned that the same adrenalin rush from covering “breaking news” that I experienced right out of college is still just as exciting nearly 30 years later.

With as much as I’ve written about the population increase and traffic problems, at least for a few short minutes my departure means there will be one less vehicle clogging up local roads. At least until I pass three or four moving vans headed this way as I get on northbound I-95.

The hub-bub over growth here can be humorous, unintentional and ironic all at once. We often get comments on our Facebook page that go something like this: “I’ve lived here for (usually less than five years) and the growth is out of control! We need a moratorium on new construction.”

It’s like people who move into phase I of “Walden Woods” subdivision after all the trees are cleared out and then complain about trees being cut down for phase II.

Bryan County will always hold a special place in my heart and I definitely plan on visiting again someday. My hope is that my boss, Jeff Whitten (one of the best I’ve ever had), will let me continue to be part of the Pembroke Mafia Football League from afar. If the Corleone family could expand to Vegas, there’s no reason the PMFL can’t expand to Michigan.

But the main reason I want to return someday is about that traffic issue. After all, I’ll need to see it with my own eyes before I’ll believe that Highway 144 actually got widened.

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