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Sunday, June 24, 2007
The Augusta-Athens runoff: There’s no place like home
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
There was a lot of talk - much of it by us — about national issues like illegal immigration and the war in Iraq, but last week’s special election to fill the seat of the late U.S. Rep. Charles Norwood underscored the importance of local considerations in an race like this.
Local as in, living there. The U.S. Constitution doesn’t require candidates to live in the district they’re running for, but in this race the costs of not being a local were strikingly clear. In a low-turnout affair like this one, the friends and neighbors effect can be decisive.
Former state senator Jim Whitehead and Dr. Paul Broun, two Republicans who live on opposite sides of the 10th Congressional District, finished in the one-two positions, followed by three resident Democrats: James Marlow, Denise Freeman and Evita Paschall.
The four Republicans who don’t live in the district - Bill Greene, Nate Pulliam, Erik Underwood and Mark Myers - trailed significantly. Only two of them, Greene and Pulliam, managed to poll ahead of Libertarian Jim Sendelbach.
As to what national significance last week’s vote might have had, Whitehead advisor John Stone had a ready answer.
“This was absolutely, without a question, a rejection of the new Democratic House and Senate,” said Stone, in words that might have come from his old boss, Norwood.
The conservative 10th is hardly a bellwether district, but the declining poll numbers for the Democratic Congress support Stone’s point. Certainly, if Marlow had gotten into the runoff with a better-than-expected vote, this race would have been read the other way.
With 44 percent of last week’s vote, most of the money and the endorsements of a string of conservative figures to establish his credos on the illegal immigration issue, Whitehead would have been a solid favorite in the July 17 runoff no matter who came in second. But a race against an anti-establishment conservative from his own party isn’t necessarily going to be easier than a run-off challenge from a Democrat.
Like Marlow, Broun comes from the Democratic-leaning Athens side of this east Georgia district, and while a four-time Republican candidate with strong ties to the religious right might seem an unlikely local favorite, Broun’s campaign was rolling out the welcome mat for Democratic voters after Tuesday’s election.
“If Democrats want to stick their finger in the eye of the Republican establishment, sending Paul Broun to Congress would be one way to do that,” said Tim Echols, Broun’s treasurer and founder of TeenPact, which has helped provide a lot of homeschooled shoeleather for conservative campaigns.
Whitehead, who he described as an establishment candidate in a district with a very conservative establishment, is “not a bad guy,” Echols said. But Broun is a candidate “willing to go off-road to stand up for his principles.”
“I’m not going to be a go-along Republican. I want to push the Republican Party toward what it should be,” Broun said last week, discussing his differences with Whitehead.
Translation: He’s a long shot, but one his heavily favored opponent can’t ignore in these discontented times. When competing for a small number of votes in the heat of July, intensity matters.
