Home > Political Insider > Archives > 2008 > March > 02
Sunday, March 2, 2008
The Obama bump in Georgia
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The votes in Texas and Ohio haven’t been cast yet. Hillary Clinton could still pull it out.
But already Democratic strategists are salivating at the nomination of Barack Obama, and the effect a black presidential candidate might have on the balance of power in the South.
A surge of voters in states with the highest African-American populations in the nation could send a rippling wave down ballots from Louisiana to North Carolina, reversing a four-decade decline in Democratic clout.
Nowhere is this more true than in Georgia, where Democrats cast 97,310 more votes in the Feb. 5 presidential primary than Republicans — a 10 percent advantage.
Randy Evans, a Republican member of the State Election Board, is predicting an impressive statewide turnout of 60 percent for the November election that could overwhelm polling sites. “We’ll have some precincts that break 70 percent. I’m willing to stick my neck out that far,” he said.
Evans contends that, by November, Georgia Republicans will match the intensity of Democrats and provide their usual proportion of votes.
Democrats have every intention of putting that theory to the test. Already, plans are afoot to expand the number of state House and Senate seats in which they’ll challenge Republican incumbents.
County operatives are recruiting more candidates for school board and county commission races. Significant gains could come in Cobb and Gwinnett counties, traditional Republican bastions where Democrats made up 48 and 46 percent of the presidential primary vote, respectively.
For Democrats, the only obstacle to this downballot momentum may be a clunker of a U.S. Senate race. Five candidates are in the Democratic race: Former TV journalist Dale Cardwell; DeKalb County CEO Vernon Jones; ecologist Rand Knight; Statesboro businessman Josh Lanier; and Rockdale County teacher Maggie Martinez.
According to the Federal Election Commission, as of Dec. 31, Democratic candidates reported a total $296,201 in cash on hand for the Senate race. Republican incumbent Saxby Chambliss reported $4.4 million. And Chambliss has no primary challenge.
But an Obama bump could change even the dynamics of Georgia’s Senate race.
Since Super Tuesday, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in Washington has gone back to a number of Senate races that had been written off as unwinnable. The race in Georgia is among them.
On Feb. 24, the DSCC completed a four-day poll of 600 likely Georgia voters that measured Chambliss’ vulnerabilities. The survey found:
— The Republican incumbent led when pitted against a generic Democrat, but only by 42 to 37 percent;
— Only 38 percent of those surveyed rated Chambliss’ performance in office as good or excellent. Forty percent rated it fair or poor — perhaps a result of the Republican senator’s involvement in an attempt at immigration reform last summer;
— And only 37 percent of voters would commit to re-electing Chambliss.
Both Democrats and Republicans have told us these weaknesses are not particularly news, but have been overshadowed by Chambliss’ fund-raising efforts, and by the weakness of the Democratic field.
The significance is that such polls are often produced when national parties have a potential candidate — or multiple candidates — they’d like to lure into a particular race. This may be the case when it comes to the Georgia contest.
“There are people who are still considering this race,” said state Democratic party chairman Jane Kidd on Friday. “If anyone else does decide to get in, it probably will happen in the next 10 days to two weeks.”
Just who, Kidd wouldn’t say. But we have heard the name of Jim Martin mentioned on several fronts.
Our attempts to reach the Atlanta attorney and former state representative were unsuccessful. But Martin ran a credible campaign for lieutenant governor in 2006, winning more votes than Mark Taylor, the unsuccessful Democratic candidate for governor.
Jones, the DeKalb CEO, must be considered the strongest Democrat currently in the Senate race.
But Martin also has demonstrated strong support in metro Atlanta, and so could challenge Jones for that spot — perhaps easing fears, privately expressed by some Democrats, that Jones’ controversial personal life could dampen the downticket effect of an Obama-generated uplift.
Cardwell to Jones: Just you and me — name the time and place
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
We weren’t there, but it seems as if Dale Cardwell is out to turn the Democratic race for U.S. Senate into a two-man race, between him and DeKalb County CEO Vernon Jones.
At Saturday night’s DeKalb County Democratic party banquet, Cardwell challenged Jones to a series of one-on-one debates. Mano a mano. Never mind those three other candidates.
The first question Cardwell would have Jones explain? Why the Democrat voted twice for George W. Bush. In his press release, Cardwell included as evidence this interview of Jones on the “Kudzu Vine” podcast of July 22, 2007.
Cardwell says the relevant portion is at the 39:45 minute mark. (We checked. Jones said he didn’t like Al Gore in 2000 because Gore “ran away from Bill Clinton” and ignored the South. In 2004, Jones said he voted for Bush because “John Kerry was a blue-blood and he didn’t understand Georgia.”)
“Jones’ record is full of secrecy, backroom deals, personal profit and favors to politically connected insiders,” Cardwell said. Given an attack of that nature, you have to consider the DeKalb County executive the man to beat. So far.
More on Democrats and the U.S. Senate race this evening.
