Georgia voters sent a very clear message in last week’s primaries: They don’t trust the state’s political leadership.

This mistrust came through in two of the most widely discussed issues on the ballot: the T-SPLOST transportation tax and the straw vote questions for a cap on lobbyist spending.

T-SPLOST lost by lopsided margins in nine of the 12 regions that voted on the one-cent sales tax for transportation projects. In the Metro Atlanta region, where business groups raised $6.5 million to campaign for its passage, the sales tax increase was defeated by 62-38 percent.

The people who run the Georgia Legislature have been wandering off in some strange and contradictory directions over the past few years.

When you consider the mood swings that seem to have affected our lawmakers, you might even think that they’ve gone off their medication.

In the hushed chamber of the Supreme Court of Georgia last week, a group of six people who once faced the possibility of going to jail, along with a life damaged by drug addiction, found themselves being honored by some of the state’s highest-ranking officials.

Gov. Nathan Deal told the group, “You are our Exhibit A that drug courts work. Your success will validate the judgment the General Assembly has made to expand these programs.”

“Don’t let us down,” the governor urged.

The question of imposing a 1-percent sales tax for transportation projects has become an issue that does not break down along familiar lines of Republican versus Democrat, or liberal versus conservative.

There are several Tea Party organizations, which are very conservative, that are opposing the T-SPLOST referendums scheduled for Georgia’s July 31 ballot. They have been joined by the Sierra Club of Georgia, whose members have political leanings to the left of the Tea Party on most issues.