THOMASVILLE — John Oxendine believes it’s time to put away the Band-Aids and start finding cures for Georgia’s many ailments.

Oxendine, the state’s insurance commissioner and fire safety chief, is eyeing the governorship in 2010. The 46-year-old Republican told a small gathering at The Plaza that he has grown disenchanted with his party and its lack of accomplishments.

“If I had to articulate why Republicans are doing a better job of running the state than the Democrats did, I’d be hard-pressed to find the words,” he said.

Oxendine, a lifelong conservative, swept into office in 1994, becoming the first Republican to head a major state agency in Georgia. He was the leading Republican vote-getter in his last two elections.

“What I liked about the Republican Party is that I believed it was more democratic than the Democratic Party,” Oxendine said. “It was truly run by everyday Georgians. It was the grassroots.

“The people ran the party.”

Oxendine, however, said too many Republicans changed their philosophy while currying favor with corporations and lobbyists.

“Large corporations and lobbyists — not all of them, but most of them — go with the power,” he said. “If the Republicans are in power, they’ll be with the Republicans. If Democrats are in power, they’ll be with the Democrats. So why should we change our party just to make them happy?

“We need to stay with the people who brought us to power.”

Oxendine said the governor and the General Assembly have accomplished little in recent years because they spend too much time battling for credit.

“That’s not the way public servants should act,” he said. “We need to require that our elected officials act with a servant’s heart.”

Oxendine said he keeps his department focused on customer service. He has expanded the schedule of consumer help-line operators to 7 p.m. on weeknights.

The relentless fight for credit has prevented solutions for many of the state’s most pressing concerns, Oxendine said.

“Every governor has had a plan to fix education, but has it gotten better?” Oxendine asked. “That’s the problem. Every governor of both parties has come in, formed a study committee that took two years, then tore down everything the previous governor did and started his own plan.

“We’ve got to realize one governor can’t fix education in two years. You’ll never finish anything if you start over every two years. I’m going to assume the previous governor had some good ideas. We might alter his plan or improve it, but we’ve got to quit reinventing the wheel.”

Oxendine said virtually nothing has been done to ease Atlanta’s traffic congestion even though a second perimeter around it was proposed by Gov. Georgia Busbee in the early 1980s.

“After 30 years, we haven’t even moved a bit of dirt to find a way around Atlanta,” he said. “That’s because politicians don’t worry about a project that will take 10-12 years to complete because they won’t be around to get credit for it. They just put a little Band-Aid on it for the next election so they can look good.

“They count on you not realizing they didn’t fix the problem until after the next election. By then, they don’t have to worry about it.”

As governor, Oxendine said he would always keep the future in mind.

“I don’t want to be the governor who opens a new freeway or a new rail line,” Oxendine said. “I want to be the governor that moves dirt. I want to get things going so we can reap the fruit when the next guy is in office.

“That goes for education, transporation and our water issues.”

Oxendine criticized current plans to close three state mental health facilities, including Southwestern State Hospital, in cost-cutting moves.

“But, we do have $24 million to build a fish hathery and a museum for sport fishing in Perry,” he sneered. “Is that the way our priorities should be?”

Oxendine also voice support for the Fair Tax, a national consumption tax that would result in the elimination of the federal income tax. He has joined Georgia Congressman and National Fair Tax leader John Linder in calling for a Constitutional Convention to repeal the 16th Amendement, which created the Internal Revenue Service.

He said he would return to Thomasville soon to discuss the Fair Tax in detail.