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Sunday, May 4, 2008
Democrats have their U.S. Senate race, and Vernon Jones remains the man to beat
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
So the Democratic race for U.S. Senate is set.
You know the undergirding dynamic of the contest. Many party leaders — though they’re loathe to say so publicly — fear that as a nominee, DeKalb County CEO Vernon Jones’ background would leave him, and Democrats on the ballot beneath him, vulnerable to a GOP onslaught.
That’s why Jim Martin, the former state lawmaker, Atlanta attorney, and unsuccessful ‘06 candidate for lieutenant governor, was the first to qualify last week. His campaign treasury is sure to be larger than those of his four rivals. Union leaders will put their organizations behind him.
Problem solved, right? Not hardly.
There’s no doubt that, after eight years in the rough-and-tumble of DeKalb politics, Jones — the only African-American in the contest — enters the U.S. Senate race with baggage that would crush a normal career. No other candidate in the race has been singled out with a web page dedicated to the public documents generated by his encounters with law enforcement authorities.
But we are not in normal times. Jones remains the man to beat. Under no circumstances should you count him out — for two reasons. One is Barack Obama, and the other is Hillary Clinton.
To best Jones, a candidate must be able to attract a healthy percentage of African-American voters, who make up roughly half of the Democratic electorate.
Yet the never-ending fight at the presidential level has forced a crippling black-white divide among state Democrats. In private counsels, both black and white Democratic leaders say they’ve never seen their party so polarized along racial lines.
African-American leaders in Georgia, who saw what happened to U.S. Rep. John Lewis when he stuck with Clinton too long, have put themselves on the sidelines of the U.S. Senate race.
With his campaign two months old, and three months to go before a July 15 vote, Martin has yet to receive an endorsement from a major African-American political figure — a necessary first step in reaching out to black voters. Bob Holmes, the only African-American state lawmaker to publicly side with Martin when he announced in March, proclaimed his retirement from the Legislature two weeks later.
Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin, who endorsed Martin in ’06 and shares several decades of political history with him, has been noticeably silent. (It’s also worth observing that Roy Barnes, the former governor, is in Martin’s corner. But Mark Taylor, the former candidate for governor who partnered with Martin in ’06, supports Dale Cardwell, the former TV journalist.)
Other factors bode well for Jones as well. The Democratic primary challenge to Lewis, the state’s longest serving congressman, by “Able” Mable Thomas and the Rev. Markel Hutchins could drive the African-American vote in Atlanta, presumably in the DeKalb CEO’s favor.
In Clayton County, which shares a border with DeKalb, the racially charged fight over a tanking school system has made the formation of any black-white alliance that much harder. Ditto for the primary fight in Savannah, where state Sen. Regina Thomas, who is African-American, has decided to challenge U.S. Rep. John Barrow, who is white.
Without help from African-American leaders at the top of the party food chain, Martin has two alternatives, black and white Democratic strategists are saying. He can attempt to change the primary landscape by persuading more white voters — bored by the lack of contests on the Republican side — to choose a Democratic ballot.
Or Martin can, as the only Democratic candidate capable of launching an effective blanket of TV or radio ads, try to make his case against Jones to black voters.
Neither task is easy. And will be made harder if Obama and Clinton are still be going at each other in July.
