Final ‘08 vote might be for Senate

A scenario is quickly unfolding in which you’re likely to see much more of Barack Obama in Georgia.

Not now, not before next Tuesday.

We’re talking afterward, when the U.S. Senate race in Georgia becomes the only important, unresolved contest in the nation.

Late last week, three separate statewide polls showed the three-man race headed for an extra 28 days of campaigning between Republican incumbent Saxby Chambliss and Democrat Jim Martin.

Libertarian Allen Buckley, though he holds an important sliver of support, is headed for elimination.

In such a situation, Las Vegas oddsmakers normally would make Chambliss a heavy favorite. Republican voters, mostly white and typically older, can be counted on to plow through holiday distractions and make it back to the polls in early December. Democratic voters, largely African-American and younger, have a poor reputation for follow-up.

But, should Obama take the White House on Nov. 4, as appears more and more likely, those assumptions go by the boards.

Georgia is the only state in the Union in which a senatorial victory is defined as 50 percent plus one vote. Which means that, in an America suffering through the worst political hangover in its history, we could find ourselves serving up the hair of the dog that bit it.

Whether Democrats reach a filibuster-proof 60 seats in nine days makes no difference. A Georgia Senate run-off would not only be the final act of the nation’s 2008 political season, but would provide a first political test for a President-elect Obama —- if he should accept the challenge.

Democratic insiders here and in Washington say there’s no doubt that Obama would make Martin’s cause his own. Support would include personal appearances in the state —- a combination victory tour and get-out-the-vote effort to erase the traditional Republican advantage in cash and reliable voting base.

African-Americans in Georgia might not turn out a second time for the less-than-charismatic Martin, one strategist told us. But they would walk across hot coals if personally asked by a President-elect Obama.

Republicans, of course, would be forced to give a Georgia runoff the same priority —- especially should a high-flying Obama involve himself. The opportunity to take the next resident of the White House down a peg or two before he’s sworn in would be irresistible.

It is possible that the title of senator from Georgia has become snakebit.

We trade in our senators like we once recycled the family station wagon: a chromed Ford, then a finned Chevy, then a Ford again, in an endless cycle of buyer’s enchantment and remorse.

Sen. Herman Talmadge, a Democrat, was replaced in 1980 by Republican Mack Mattingly, who was subbed out in 1986 by Democrat Wyche Flower, who was beaten in 1992 by Republican Paul Coverdell. Coverdell won two elections but died shortly after the second and was replaced for four years by the nominally Democratic Zell Miller, who was traded in for a 2004 model Republican Johnny Isakson.

Sam Nunn, a Democrat, was the last Georgia senator to serve out multiple terms. He retired in 1996, to be replaced by Max Cleland, another Democrat —- who was promptly beaten by Chambliss in 2002. You may consider yourself up-to-date.

After Fowler’s defeat in 1992 —- a Libertarian threw the race into a runoff held two days before Thanksgiving —- Democrats tried to put a damper on the turnover by lowering the bar of victory to 45 percent plus one vote.

Republicans howled heresy. Years later, at the same time it passed a measure to require voters to produce photographic IDs, a Republican-conquered Legislature restored the rule of “50 percent plus one.”

Republicans have already expressed regret for their approval of early voting in Georgia, which the local Obama campaign has mastered with astounding efficiency.

So there is a tendency to wonder whether Republicans are victims of the law of unintended consequences when it comes to the “50 percent plus one” rule.

Not so, one plugged-in Republican state lawmaker said Friday. There’s every chance, he allowed, that the 50-percent rule will preserve the Chambliss campaign and permit it to fight another day.

That’s right. In a world suddenly turned upside down by Barack Obama and Wall Street, some Georgia Republicans are conceding that Chambliss —- who only months ago was considered unassailable —- could finish behind a relatively unknown Democrat next Tuesday.

jgalloway@ajc.com