MARIETTA — Both sides of the controversial transportation tax referendum, known as TSPLOST, campaigned Saturday morning in two very different ways in Cobb County.

Opponents of the 10-year, 1 percent sales tax spent just over two hours driving around Interstate 285 in vehicles decorated with signage and slogans opposing the tax increase. The proponents, who believe the tax will ease traffic congestion, held a more conventional outdoor rally in Marietta.

With the July 31 vote a little more than a week away, TSPLOST advocates and opponents exercised some creativity in their direct appeals to voters on Saturday.

About 25 people who are against TSPLOST gathered in Kennesaw off Barrett Parkway before meeting with two other groups of motorists on what was dubbed a “Drive for Liberty,” in which a column of vehicles decked out in anti-TSPLOST signage and American flags, with headlights on, completed two loops around I-285.

Pat Negron of Marietta, an organizer for the newly formed Individual Liberty Coalition, said she believed the drive was effective in getting the group’s message out.

“The pro-TSPLOST people have $8 million to spend on advertising, billboards and newspaper ads,” Negron said. “We don’t have any money. So what we did was the next best thing, that is to have our drive in protest of the TSPLOST.”

Responding to the protest drive, Seth Millican of Marietta told a pro-TSPLOST crowd of roughly 40 people in front of Dave Poes BBQ on Whitlock Avenue that Negron’s group was doing nothing more than wasting fuel while driving in circles.

Millican, a Citizens for Transportation Mobility organizer, had two tables of barbeque and donuts awaiting those who showed up at the event, just down the road from the Cobb Board of Elections and Registration office, where early voting took place.

Guest speaker, former Republican state Sen. Chuck Clay of Marietta, fired up the rally with a speech in which he compared the referendum’s list of local projects to past building projects that used tax dollars, such as the Bell Bomber plant and county water and sewer system.

“We are going to win this thing and we’re going to win it because of people just like this,” he told the gathering.

“I don’t know of a single community anywhere that has been better served by the investment of public trust and public dollars in the infrastructure of their community.”