Lifelong Democrat Phil Davis will be honored with a Lifetime Achievement award at the state party’s annual Jefferson Jackson Dinner on March 22.

The event will be held in the Thomas Murphy Ballroom of the Georgia World Congress Center, from 7 to 9 p.m.

Democratic National Committee Chair Tim Kaine, former governor of Virginia (2006-2010), is the scheduled keynote speaker. Ambassador Andrew Young and Georgia Agriculture Commissioner Tommy Irvin will be recognized as the 2010 Georgia Giant Honorees.

Davis will represent the 13th Congressional District, whose past recipients of the award include Holman Edmund (2007) and Sandra Hardy (2008), both of Fulton County, and Terrell Starr of Clayton County, who was last year’s honoree.

Davis said he was stunned, but honored.

“For the first or maybe the second time in my life, I was speechless,” he said, after receiving the call from Nikema N. Williams, chair of the Democratic Party of Georgia’s 13th Congressional District.

Davis joked that he received the honor by living a long time, which may be true in part. The honor is not likely to be given to newcomers with less experience.

The e-mail from Williams announcing Davis’ selection and explaining who is eligible for the honor said “this individual should reside in the 13th Congressional District, have been involved in Democratic politics for a long time, (is) currently involved in Democratic politics and older in age.”

Davis has been a member of the local party for over 30 years, and served as its chair in 1981-82. Recently, the party elected a slate of officers that Davis hopes will restore it to its one-time prominence as the dominant party in the county, he said.

“One of our basic premises is that we are (the party) for the people, not beholden to the monied people. I think the other party forgets that,” he said. “This is what brought me to the party a long time ago, that it’s the people’s party.”

Nationally, Davis said he would like to see a single payor health insurance program for all, like Medicare, he said.

“We are the only so-called civilized nation in the world that says either you pay (for healthcare) or you die,” Davis said, estimating that about 120 people a day die because of it.

A peek at his biography shows that Davis has a passion for social activism, a touch of politics and a love of jazz.

A native of Quincy, Fla., Davis came to Atlanta in 1957 as an announcer-newsman for WSB-TV (Channel 2), after working two years at Channel 6 in Tallahassee.

While at WSB, Davis was president of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) union and was involved in the early days of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), which he said didn’t endear him to the station’s management.

“They forced me out,” he said.

Friends in President Lyndon B. Johnson’s administration recruited Davis into federal service, where he was employed in the Executive Office of the President. He was eventually assigned to the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) – the “poverty program,” he calls it – and worked with the early Head Start program in Mississippi out of the OEO regional office in Atlanta.

Started by Johnson in 1964 as part of his War on Poverty, OEO was dismantled by President Richard M. Nixon in 1974, before being finally closed by President Gerald Ford in Jan. 1975, according to answers.com.

OEO was replaced by the Community Services Administration (CSA) and all of the OEO employees were hired by CSA.

In 1981, President Ronald Reagan abolished the CSA and the Employment Opportunity Act — which had created OEO — and Davis ran against Republican Newt Gingrich for Congress.

But he withdrew from the primary due to lack of money, he said.

Returning to the private sector, Davis was vice president of U.S. operations for a Korean company that exported granite from Elberton, Ga. to Korea and Japan, was co-owner and operator of a deli in Douglasville and later worked for the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office (part-time) in court security.

An Army veteran who served during the Korean War, Davis is also a jazz lover who played drums in local and college bands.

He is also an ordained minister (1967, in the Universal Life Church) and a member of Veterans for Peace.

Davis is divorced and father of two daughters – one in Florida, the other in Texas – and a son in Oregon.