The lessons (maybe) of Georgia’s long election

The 2008 election season is — finally — over. Tuesday’s runoff election ended a brutal cycle.

But lessons remain. What have we learned? And what do these lessons portend for 2010 and beyond? After all, the next campaign is already gearing up.

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JASON GETZ / jgetz@ajc.com/Staff

Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) fell short of a majority on Nov. 4. But he cruised to re-election in the runoff as the enthusiasm gap shifted back in his party’s favor.

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1. If Republicans rebound nationally, they can thank Georgia.

While Republicans fell across the country, Georgia’s GOP team limited its losses to a handful of legislative seats, delivered 15 electoral votes to its presidential nominee, retained a U.S. Senate seat and all seven of its U.S. House seats. And although U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss got pushed to a runoff against Democratic challenger Jim Martin, Chambliss’ 14-point win was a salve.

“This election that Saxby won and won handily gave new life to the party,” said Linda Herren, one of three Georgians on the Republican National Committee. “We were sitting around like someone licked the red off our candy when [John] McCain lost [the presidency]. This really energized the base again.”

Top national Republicans are looking to Chambliss’ victory as a foundation on which to rebuild. RNC Chairman Mike Duncan called it the first victory of 2010. But some Georgia Republicans, including Erick Erickson of the political blog Peach Pundit, have accused the Chambliss organization of running a shoddy general election campaign that kept the senator from avoiding a runoff.

2. The Peach State is still red …

National Democrats threw hundreds of thousands of dollars into Georgia in an effort to defeat Chambliss in the general election and failed. Ultimately, the runoff wasn’t close. In fact, it was a more accurate reflection of the electorate than the general election, said J. Gregory Howard, chairman of the Gwinnett County GOP.

Democrats disagree and argue that runoffs are not the same as general elections.

Chambliss was forced into the runoff by getting less than a majority of the general election vote (49.8 percent. Martin took a little over 46 percent). On Nov. 4 in Gwinnett County, Howard said, there were at least 25,000 voters who chose Barack Obama and Martin but voted for Republicans in local elections. Those were Republican voters, he said, who were turned off by the top of the ticket.

Last Tuesday, he said, they came back into the fold.

3. … but it isn’t as red as it once was.

Obama energized the state Democratic Party in ways no Democrat has in years, getting more votes and a higher percentage of the vote in Georgia than any Democratic candidate since Jimmy Carter. State-level fund-raising, grass-roots activism and organization building were all enhanced.

Martin Matheny of the Democratic Party of Georgia said last week that Democrats didn’t lose control of the state in one election and they won’t win it back in one election, either. Democrats believe they now have building blocks they need to regain relevancy headed into 2010, when both the governor’s job will be open and another U.S. Senate race — for Republican Johnny Isakson’s seat — is in the offing. “What we saw in ‘08 in terms of field operation was more extensive than anything we’d done before and is going to continue in the future,” said state Rep. Rob Teilhet (D-Smyrna), considered a rising star in the party.

Teilhet sees demographic shifts that have favored Democrats in the suburbs such as his own Cobb County, where Obama took about 45 percent of the vote. In the General Assembly, four Republican House members lost their election races, and each was in a district with high population growth.

4. Still, Tuesday’s runoff result doesn’t bode well for Democrats in 2010. Or does it?

By all accounts, African-American voters did not turn out in the same percentages this past Tuesday that they did on Nov. 4, when they made up at an estimated 30 percent of the electorate.

Democrats must discover a way to consistently motivate and expand their base, said Jim Coonan, an Atlanta-based Democratic political consultant.

Parties typically focus on voter turnout and voter persuasion — giving voters a reason to go to the polls. It’s largely issue- based and can be accomplished through grass-roots activities and advertising. A party needs a balance of both. Georgia Democrats have tended to focus just on driving turnout. “We’ve got the balance wrong,” Coonan said. “We saw a high mark a month ago in turnout in Georgia, and it wasn’t quite enough. We need to get our persuasion arm higher.”

But, Teilhet and other Democrats argue, runoffs are anomalies. Getting voters to return to the polls takes a massive persuasion campaign. Republicans were able to argue that Chambliss was a “firewall” to prevent Democrats from gaining a potential 60th seat in the Senate, which would allow them to force votes on contentious bills and appointments.

Democrats struggled to give voters a reason to come back out in the cold and cast another vote in an election with little on the ballot. It’s a moment in time, Democrats argue, not a sign of things to come.

5. The campaign for 2010 begins now, and both sides claim an edge.

“For the Republican majority in Georgia, this is kind of like that period where the Titanic hit the iceberg but the captain and crew couldn’t tell how bad the damage was and thought everything would be fine,” Teilhet said.

“Barack Obama doesn’t set foot in the state in the general election and gets 47 percent in the state, 45 percent in Cobb County,” he said. “Jim Martin gets in the race in March, is dramatically outspent and gets almost 47 percent in November.”

Democrats, Teilhet said, have advantages they didn’t have in 2006: A grass-roots framework helped by Obama’s campaign and technology that could allow them to compete with Republicans in voter identification and voter contact.

Still, Democrats have lost two consecutive gubernatorial elections and three U.S. Senate races. Until they prove they can win a big, statewide race, this will all be theoretical.

Herren, the RNC member, said Chambliss’ close call reminded Republicans what’s at stake and what they have going for them: control of the state House and Senate, the governor and lieutenant governor, seven of 13 congressional seats and both U.S. Senate seats. They also have built-in advantages in party identification among the state’s voters and the ability to gobble up large sums of independent but conservative voters.

The runoff, Herren said, has “pumped everybody back up.”