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Sunday, July 23, 2006
Shirley Franklin clears her throat in a run-off
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin was as quiet as a church mouse with laryngitis during the Democratic race for governor.
But things change. She’s stepping into the Democratic primary run-off for lieutenant governor in a big way.
We hear Franklin will endorse Jim Martin, a former state House representative who represented the city for several years. That’s not good news for Greg Hecht, a Jonesboro attorney and state senator who finished second last Tuesday, with 36 percent of the vote to Martin’s 41 percent.
‘Newly minted Republican’ Zell Miller doesn’t cut it
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
If it’s 9 a.m. Monday, Democratic fax machines are whirring. In case you missed it, over the weekend Zell Miller confessed he’d picked up a Republican primary ballot for the first time last Tuesday, to vote for Gov. Sonny Perdue — and presumably for Ralph Reed, whom he also endorsed.
We haven’t seen them. But we’re sure the press releases will say that, with his Tuesday ballot, Miller officially forfeited his status as “maverick Democrat.â€? This will be a great lost to journalistic cliché-dom. Somehow, “swing voter Zell Millerâ€? doesn’t have the same panache.
The guy who took aim at an icon
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Much has been said about Ralph Reed’s loss last Tuesday in the Republican primary for lieutenant governor. Not enough has been made of Casey Cagle’s victory in that same race.
In many ways, the race was familiar to long-time Georgians: The high school graduate against the PhD. The stammering, unknown state senator versus the self-assured, national TV presence. Politically, this state has often served as a cemetery for the slick, the well-spoken and well-connected.
Cagle had a compelling up-by-bootstraps story, but he also had one of the best-run, best-coordinated campaigns we’ve seen in quite a while. The candidate spoke on Sunday, TV ads carried the message Monday, direct mail hit on Tuesday, followed by robo-calls on Wednesday. Easy to say, hard to pull off.
Coordination requires unity of purpose, and Cagle’s core strategists had that in spades. First, many were former employees or associates of Reed — including campaign manager Elizabeth Dewberry and consultant Joel McElhannon. Secondly, all understood that they were about to say very bad things about a Republican icon. Fail, and work in this state would be hard to find for a very long time.
Confident of his Christian base, Reed sought an alliance with mainstream Republicans on issues such as taxes and job growth. By constantly harping on Reed’s relationship with Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff, Cagle’s strategy was to push Reed to the right, out of the reach of centrist Republicans.
Reed’s own TV ads citing his former leadership of the Christian coalition was seen as evidence that Reed had been forced to tend to his base. Then Cagle even went after that, by charging Reed with hypocrisy in a two-week TV ad blitz.
Last week, on the web site of National Review, the conservative magazine, Cagle’s pollster, John McLaughlin, called the victory “the beginning of the Republican reformation� — a metaphor loaded with images of a debauched religious order grown too comfortable with its own success.
“Georgia Republicans and conservatives … have rejected the corruption of our movement and they should be praised for their wisdom,� McLaughlin wrote.
But in many ways, the Reed-Cagle contest was yet another round in the fight for control of the Republican party, between business interests and social conservatives. Cagle matched Reed point-for-point on issues dear to religious conservatives.
But his campaign also built heavily on low-profile business networks — bankers, real estate agents, car dealers, and so on. Cagle also won the endorsements of more than 300 elected officials in Georgia.
Perhaps more importantly, in an interview over the weekend, Cagle also hinted at silent help from those who thought a Reed victory would lead to a disastrous narrowing of the Republican name brand in Georgia.
“This chapter is going to be viewed as a redefining of the Republican party. Once and for all, it is very much a mainstream party,� Cagle said.
