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Monday, October 6, 2008
Bailout fallout in Virginia: John Warner may endorse the Democrat
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
If you think the Wall Street vote divided Republicans in Georgia, take a look at what havoc the issue caused in Virginia over the weekend.
This is from Sunday’s Virginia-Pilot newspaper:
Retiring U.S. Sen. John Warner on Saturday voiced disappointment in fellow Republican Jim Gilmore’s efforts to succeed him this fall and declined to endorse him. Instead, Warner suggested that he may wind up backing Democrat Mark Warner in the race. The two Warners are not related.
John Warner took exception to Gilmore’s strong condemnation of a $700 billion Wall Street rescue package that was passed by the House of Representatives on Friday and signed by President Bush.
“I’m disappointed that he spoke against the rescue package that’s vital to Virginia and vital to the nation,” John Warner said during a telephone news conference.
An educated reader we happened to be on the phone with also reminded the Insider that Warner also refused to endorse Ollie North, the Republican in the ‘94 Virginia race for Senate.
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Says Chambliss: ‘Enough about Wall Street. Let’s talk about the gas shortage’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Looks like U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss wants to change the topic — back to gasoline and energy. Things were going so much better for the Republican incumbent’s campaign when the focus was on drilling rather being drilled by the stock market.
Republicans felt shortchanged last month when their victory of the summer — the caving of congressional Democrats on the offshore oil issue — was obliterated by the financial crisis on Wall Street.
With Georgia just finished with a serious gasoline shortage, Chambliss apparently thought it worthwhile to revive the topic.
This below, entitled “Insane” was posted on YouTube only a few hours ago. A spokesman for the Chambliss campaign confirmed that it’s a new TV ad headed your way.
Here’s the script:
Chambliss: “We have to get the gas price situation under control. We have to explore for oil right here in the United States.
“We’re dependent on foreign oil for 62 percent of our oil. We have more oil within our country than all the oil in Saudi Arabia.
“So why in the world would the left-wing Democrats in Congress oppose exploring for oil in America. That’s insane.”
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Another poll: This one says the U.S. Senate contest is a 1-point race
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Democrats are buzzing over a poll commissioned by the liberal blog Daily Kos, which shows the U.S. Senate race in Georgia to be a hair tighter than it was last week.
The poll puts the Republican incumbent Saxby Chambliss at 45 percent, and Democrat Jim Martin at 44 percent, with 4 percent going to “other” and 7 percent undecided.
The poll was conducted 9/29-10/1, before the completion of Washington’s debate over the Wall Street bailout, and has a margin of error of plus-or-minus 4 percent.
“The big question with this rash of new, great-looking polls for Democrats is whether the trends are a temporary bounce in reaction the economic crisis, akin to a convention bounce, or whether it’s a longer-lasting trend,” the web site says.
However long the trend lasts, Democrats high and low are more than happy to see it. Over the weekend, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was in Atlanta to inspect doings and, we assume, to do a little fund-raising for Martin. But it was not well-advertised.
The Daily Kos results echo a SurveyUSA poll, which last week had Chambliss leading Martin by two points, 46 to 44 percent.
As have other polls, the Daily Kos also shows a tightening presidential race, with Republican John McCain at 50 percent and Democrat Barack Obama at 43 percent.
But the poll is leavened with statistics that ought to concern both supporters of Martin and Obama.
For instance, the poll puts Chambliss’ favorable rating at 54 percent (unfavorable rating at 42). Martin’s favorable rating is 41 percent (unfavorable rating at 34 percent). Fifteen percent of those polled didn’t know enough about Martin to make a decision — a probable result of his limited finances.
In the presidential race, Georgia is still a racially polarized state. African-Americans support Obama, 91 to 5 percent. Whites support McCain, 73 to 21 percent.
Martin does better than Obama among whites, with 26 percent — but worse among black voters, with 83 percent.
One eye-opener: In the race for the youth vote, defined as 18 to 29, McCain edges out Obama, 47 to 46 percent.
Also today, 538.com run by Nate Silver, a self-identified Democrat, takes the voter registration numbers offered up on the Insider over the weekend, and crunches them a little more.
But Silver also says this:
A related question is whether the pollsters are underrepresenting the black vote in their turnout estimates in states like Georgia. I think they might be. In their past two surveys of Georgia, SurveyUSA pegged black voter turnout at 25-26 percent.
This is a pretty safe assumption, since it exactly matches the Secretary of State’s turnout estimate from 2004. But this isn’t 2004. I would be surprised if black turnout wasn’t at least 27-28 percent, and somewhere in the 29-31 percent range is entirely possible.
If those numbers are achieved, Georgia is pretty close to being a toss-up. And if it is a toss-up for Barack Obama, it is probably also a toss-up for Jim Martin, who is attempting to unseat Saxby Chambliss from the Senate.
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John Boehner, Tom Coburn at Tuesday GOP fund-raiser
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The state GOP announced this morning that U.S. Rep. John Boehner of Ohio, the House minority leader, and U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma will be the featured speakers at its Victory Dinner fund-raiser on Tuesday.
Both men were supporters of last week’s $700 billion bailout of Wall Street, so it will be interesting to see how much of their remarks will be devoted to smoothing over Republican division on the issue.
Other speakers will include Saxby Chambliss, who’s up for re-election, Gov. Sonny Perdue, U.S. Rep. Tom Price of Roswell and state party chairman Sue Everhart. Locale for the evening event is the Hilton Atlanta.
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Buckley aims another set of angry radio ads at Chambliss
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
With the U.S. Senate race in so much flux, you have to pay attention, even to the small stuff.
Libertarian Allen Buckley, attempting to whittle away at Republican incumbent Saxby Chambliss’ right flank, is out with three 30-second radio ads that will play in Columbus on WDAK and Savannah on WTKS.
The buy is quite low, about $500 each, Buckley said. (As is the production value, which Buckley didn’t say.)
Even so, the content is incendiary, even brutal — and similar in tone to an angry package of ads the Libertarian floated last month. In other words, they’re everything that Democrat Jim Martin could want.
While he approved each one, Buckley said the ads weren’t his idea.
“Some of my ‘free’ help came up with them,” Buckley said in an e-mail exchange this morning. “They do wake people up and provide for discussion. They’re not entirely my style. As you know, I’m more an issues guy. I’ll have a commercial coming out soon that is more serious.”
In one ad, Buckley accuses Chambliss of avoiding service in Vietnam with a “fistful” of deferments and a bad knee that hasn’t affected his golf game.
In another, relatively confusing spot, characters accuse Chambliss of browbeating a whistle-blowing witness during a hearing on the explosion of a sugar refinery near Savannah. “Saxby threw the poor man under the bus, and he just beat him like he owned him,” says the ad.
Just for background, here’s the original July posting on the Senate hearing in question.
An ad on last week’s vote to rescue Wall Street is the most topical: “Seven hundred billion dollars. The largest pork project in history. Saxby voted yes, twice. When what he cares about is threatened, Saxby isn’t afraid to act — with your money.”
Fact check: Unless there was some procedural vote that we missed, Chambliss only voted once. It was the House that took up the matter twice, defeating it on Monday and passing it on Friday. U.S. Reps. Jim Marshall and Sanford Bishop, both Democrats, cast “yes” votes each time.
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