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Tuesday, September 5, 2006
Cagle heads for the sticks, and the sticks need propping up
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
On Tuesday, Casey Cagle, the Republican nominee for lieutenant governor, hitched up his britches and resumed the daily grind of campaigning across the state.
Over four days, Cagle will hit 25 communities in rural Georgia, each one smaller than the next. The “Hope and Opportunity Tour,” he’s calling it.
This very much resembles the strategy that Democrat Greg Hecht, the Jonesboro attorney and former state senator, attempted in his effort to collar the nomination. It didn’t work. Atlanta attorney Jim Martin won the run-off.
But that doesn’t mean Hecht didn’t have a reason for doing what he did. Or that Cagle doesn’t need to spend a week on Georgia’s blue highways.
Last month, shortly after the August run-off, Democratic strategist James Carville’s outfit in Washington posted an analysis of a crucial weapon in the Republican arsenal: “Battling for White Rural America: Denying Republicans Their Base”.
The entire paper is worth the time of any laptop pundit in either camp. But here’s the gist:
“White rural America forms the cornerstone of the Republican base. In 2004, 64 percent of these voters voted for Bush, and white rural voters broke for Republican congressional candidates by a margin of 17 points. In the 2004 election, more than 60 percent of white rural voters approved of the job Bush was doing as president, and Republicans had a 22-point advantage in party identification. Only 34 percent gave the Democratic Part a warm thermometer rating, while 57 percent gave the Republican party a warm thermometer rating.
“But since 2004, the tide has changed: the loyalty of white rural America is up for grabs. White rural Americans are evenly divided (italics in the original) on whether they approve or disapprove of the job Bush is doing as president. Sixty percent think the country is moving in the wrong direction….The parallel for Democrats would be Democrats having only a 9-point lead among union households.”
This could have application not just with Georgia’s statewide races, but with the two heavily rural congressional contests in which Republicans are desperate for upsets: The 12th District race featuring GOP challenger Max Burns versus Democratic incumbent John Barrow; and the 8th District race in which GOP ex-congressman Mac Collins wants to oust incumbent Jim Marshall, a Democrat.
