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Wednesday, June 20, 2007
His calendar just opened up. Like magic.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
After ducking two of the final broadcast debates in the run-up to Tuesday’s vote in the 10th District congressional race, Republican front-runner Jim Whitehead of Columbia County now says he’s in the mood to talk.
In his first post-election press release, the loose-tongued scamp has committed to three confrontations with his yet-to-be-named run-off opponent:
— One on Friday, June 29, from 5 to 6 p.m. WGAC 580AM in Augusta;
— A televised debate sponsored by the Atlanta Press Club and GPTV on July 9;
— And a third in Athens on WGAU 1340 AM, on a date to be determined.
The run-off for the 10th ain’t final, but Whitehead’s already focused on Broun
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
When last we checked, there were about eight precincts still uncounted from Tuesday’s 10th District congressional race.
There’s been no concession from Democrat Jim Marlow. That said, the campaign for Jim Whitehead of Columbia County has begun looking at the run-off as a Republican-on-Republican affair.
The front-runner is gearing up for Paul Broun of Athens— who has run in three federal races, but has yet to win one.
We talked this afternoon to Joel McElhannon, one of Whitehead’s consultants. The Whitehead campaign will allege that Broun a) made a 1996 statement in which he allegedly advocated the elimination of Social Security and Medicare; b) wants an end to federal spending on education; and c) doesn’t think disaster relief is a proper role for the federal government.
In other words, Whitehead campaign’s message will be ‘We’re conservative, but Broun’s off the charts.”
This race to July 17 will be brutish, short, and will pit metro Augusta against that high-brow city with the university. “We’re coming to Athens and hell is coming with us,” McElhannon said.
Georgia companies plead with Isakson and Chambliss: ‘Stay the course’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Just got off a conference call with the Georgia Employers for Immigration Reform, the only big group in the state to come down on the side of the bill now being torn apart in Washington.
These are the people that put up the 60-second radio spot on WSB this week.
With the immigration bill coming up for a second round of debate, the ad’s intended to offer some encouragement to U.S. Sens. Johnny Isakson and Saxby Chambliss, who had been deeply involved in negotiations — though they’ve begun to pull away after harsh reaction at home.
“These two senators have rolled up their sleeves and been willing to, against a lot of pressure, to get out there and participate in the development of this bill over many months,” said GEIR chairman Wayne Lord. “But certainly the purpose of this campaign at this time is to encourage them to stay the course, continue to be engaged in this important process.”
The GEIR’s timing may be off. Local blogs are already discussing a report that both senators intend to vote against cutting off debate for the bill — in essence, to kill it. Here’s the CQ article at the center of the conversation.
Lord is a vice president with Pilgrim’s Pride, the largest poultry company in Georgia. We’re to get a complete list of companies involved in this effort sometime tomorrow.
But those on the line Wednesday said they’re desperate for a workforce that won’t disappear tomorrow — and decried the atmosphere that has put their employees under a “siege mentality.”
“Companies want stability. We like stability in interest rates, we like stability in predicting what tomorrow will bring. We like stability in markets. And right now, our most important resource of the company is up for grabs,” said Steve Newton, an executive vice president for the Southern Nurseries Association.
Listeners to the telephone conference call were carefully screened. Last month, a foe of the bill was quietly given the password to a conference call in which Isakson and Chambliss spoke with state lawmakers.
The morning line on the 10th District race
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Republican Jim Whitehead finished with 43.5 percent of the vote last night, according to the secretary of state’s web site.
But the real news is Democrat Jim Marlow’s third-place finish, out of the running. Republican Paul Broun of Athens came in second, with 20.7 percent, or 11,203 votes. Marlow, also of Athens, finished with 20.3 percent, or 11,016 votes.
All total, the three Democratic candidates in the 10-candidate race gathered up only 28.3 percent of a vote — hardly evidence of any broad-based dissatisfaction with the Republican brand.
In the 2006 race against U.S. Rep. Charlie Norwood, who died in February, the underfunded Democrat received 33 percent of the vote.
Democratic blogger Jon Flack at Tondee’s Tavern has a cogent, early morning expression of frustration.
A number-crunching friend provides this:
— Athens and Clarke County accounted for 36.2 percent of Marlow’s total votes. Clarke was the only county he carried. Twenty-one counties are in the district. Whitehead carried 16, and Broun took four.
— Columbia County accounted for nearly 40 percent of all votes Whitehead received. Columbia County also had a disproportionately high turnout—-accounting for nearly a quarter of all votes cast in the race so far. In Norwood’s ‘06 victory, Columbia provided 18 percent.
Which means Whitehead’s strategy of avoiding the stage with other candidates seems to have worked. And he doesn’t appear to have been unharmed by grassroots anger at the Republican establishment for its role in the current debate over immigration reform.
Republican Bill Greene, who ran as the hard-core immigration candidate, obtained a mere 3 percent of the vote.
Turnout looks to have been about 16 percent, well above the 10 percent predicted by Secretary of State Karen Handel. Ninety-six percent of the vote has been counted.
If you check the county-by-county chart, the missing votes seem to be uncounted absentee and early votes, which trend Republican.
As most of you know, a 187-margin in the race for second place seems small. But in this era of automatic and automated recounts, the likelihood of this changing is relatively small.
Last night’s results go a long way toward guaranteeing the east Georgia seat will remain in Republican hands, dashing any Democratic hopes of wreaking a bit of summer havoc with the Iraq issue.
“There is little doubt that a Republican will be elected as Georgia’s newest congressman on July 17th,” said Tom Cole, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee late last night. “Georgia’s 10th congressional district is a Republican stronghold that has performed true to form by delivering approximately 70 percent of its votes for Republican candidates in this election.”
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