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DEL.ICIO.USTaylor defeats Cox; readies for Perdue
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Lt. Gov. Mark Taylor on Tuesday finally got what he’s been itching for these past four years: a straight-up political fight with Republican Gov. Sonny Perdue.
Taylor, 49, the self-proclaimed “Big Guy,” defeated Secretary of State Cathy Cox and two minor candidates in the Democratic gubernatorial primary. Cox conceded the race at midnight.
Taylor quickly shifted gears to face Perdue, a well-funded incumbent who has gone from long-shot candidate to leader of the new political power base in Georgia since the 2002 elections.
Perdue has a $9 million war chest, at least nine times more than Taylor as the general election campaign begins this morning.
It’s the contest that many have anticipated since 2002, when Perdue upset Democratic Gov. Roy Barnes and Taylor won re-election as the state’s second-in-charge in — and quickly became the new governor’s most vocal critic.
Now, Taylor said he will stand his record of achievement, of helping to shepherd the popular programs of then-Gov. Zell Miller through the state Senate in the 1990s, against those of Perdue, whom Miller endorsed. “I have been in office longer than Gov. Perdue, and I’ve done more with my time,” Taylor said.
House Speaker Glenn Richardson (R-Hiram) said Taylor’s record can’t compare with Perdue’s, something Republicans will point out in the fall campaign.
“In the last four years, we’ve taken Georgia from a $640 million deficit to a surplus $500 million,” Richardson said. “I think that speaks volumes about how this governor views the taxpayer’s money and the operation of state government.”
“The lieutenant governor does nothing but stand there and hold a gavel. He doesn’t even vote to break a tie.”
The Democratic governor’s race, along with the Republican contest for lieutenant governor, were the two biggest draws of primary elections that saw light turnout in many parts of the state and polling problems in metro Atlanta.
Perdue easily won re-nomination for governor Tuesday against long-shot Republican challenger Ray McBerry, head of Georgia League of the South, a “Southern nationalist” organization.
Taylor’s road to the general election was much more difficult. Only a few months ago Cox led in the polls, promising to become Georgia’s first woman governor and take on the “good ol’ boy” network that she said had run state government for decades. But Taylor chipped away at her lead with a $4 million TV advertising campaign and pounced on early mistakes made by the Cox campaign, branding her a “flip-flopper” after she appeared to change her stance on the state’s constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.
Cox, who lost her bid for governor on her 48th birthday, showed that she wasn’t afraid of a bare-knuckle fight, accusing Taylor of using his office for personal gain.
From her campaign, Georgians saw some of the soft spots in Taylor’s record that Perdue will likely exploit, such as his work to get prison labor for a recycling plant that had been doing business with a Taylor family company.
But Taylor also showed a political tenaciousness in besting Cox, and by Tuesday night his campaign was already preparing for Perdue.
“I think the 19th [of July] will be another day on the trail, the first day in the fall campaign,” he said. “We have so much work to do. No break.”
Taylor, who has won every race he’s run dating back to his first bid for the state Senate in the late 1980s, is expected to receive national money contributed by traditional Democratic sources, such as unions, and party officials think he will have more than enough to be competitive with Perdue.
The Democratic hopeful will use Perdue’s own commercials this spring against him. The state GOP ran a series of ads touting Perdue’s accomplishments, using the catch-phrase “Sonny did” after listing something the governor did.
Democrats are prepared to counter that theme with their own “Sonny did” list that will point out, for instance, that school funding was cut more than $1 billion under the governor.
Taylor also heads into the general election with a veteran campaign staff, including Jim Andrews and Rick Dent, who learned how to win races in Georgia when Democrats ruled the state.
But it will likely be an uphill battle. Conventional wisdom among statehouse veterans and political scientists is that voters need a pretty strong reason to dump an incumbent like Perdue.
“You basically have to give voters a reason to fire the person in charge,” said Alan Abramowitz, an Emory University political scientist.
And while Taylor touts his work to help pass the HOPE scholarship, the lottery, the pre-kindergarten program, two-strikes-and-you’re-out crime legislation and the removal of the sales tax from groceries, those all happened in the 1990s, almost ancient political history.
Cox, in an interview the day before the primary, said Perdue was beatable because the state was split between the two parties and independents could go either way. “The Republicans are bragging about him doing nothing as governor and they think voters will reward a do-nothing governor,” Cox said. “Voters are angry about what he has not done.”
Recent polls have shown Perdue with a high approval rating, and Taylor has so far offered few specifics on issues such as education and transportation. He has told voters he’ll replace the more than $1 billion in school funding cut during Perdue’s administration, but he doesn’t say how, other than that he’d “re-prioritize” the budget.
And he said he’ll cut class sizes, another costly proposal. Despite the odds against beating an incumbent, former GOP lawmaker Matt Towery, an Atlanta pollster, said the battle-tested Taylor and his team shouldn’t be underestimated by the Republicans.
“The $9 million question is how does Perdue and his campaign now deal with attack ads, because they haven’t had to do that so far,” he said. “They’re playing in the big leagues. The Big Guy knows what he’s doing.”
Staff writers Jim Tharpe, Jeremy Redmon and Ty Tagami contributed to this article.
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