A SurveyUSA poll conducted for 11Alive this morning is showing Democrat Michelle Nunn -- for the first time -- opening up a small lead in the U.S. Senate race, though one within the poll's sampling error of +/- 4.2 percent. The toplines:
-- Nunn: 48 percent;
-- Republican David Perdue: 45 percent;
-- Libertarian Amanda Swafford: 3 percent.
The Nunn shift likely reflects the thinking behind the outside money that has poured into this race in recent days, and could be a result of her outsourcing push against Perdue. Witness this finding, via the WXIA-TV website:
Some caveats: The poll is a mixture of auto-dialing and online responses that showed Jack Kingston with a huge lead in the U.S. Senate primary runoff, but what matters here is the movement. A week ago the same poll had Perdue ahead by one percentage point.
The governor's race, meanwhile, is deadlocked in the survey: Republican Gov. Nathan Deal at 46 percent, Democrat Jason Carter at 46 percent, and Libertarian Andrew Hunt at 4 percent. A week ago, Deal was up two percentage points.
The full crosstabs can be found here. Note that African-Americans make up 27 percent of its likely voter sample -- which would be lower than 2010. The female vote is weighted at 51 percent -- also lower than 2010.
***
In downballot races, the 11Alive/SurveyUSA poll show Republicans in good shape, with two exceptions. In the race for attorney general, Republican incumbent Sam Olens leads Democrat Greg Hecht, 46 to 43 percent -- within the margin of error. And in the state school superintendent contest, Democrat Valarie Wilson and Republican Richard Woods are tied, 46 to 46 percent.
The SurveyUSA poll also shows that the issue of Common Core, the volunteer multi-state standard for k-12 public education, may be a powerful factor in a GOP primary, but isn't much of a driver in a general election. Twenty percent of voters said they favored it, 35 percent said they oppose it, and 45 percent didn't know enough to say one way or another.
***
Democrats have a new, under-the-radar ally in their Georgia ground game: The League of Conservation Voters environmental group.
LCV endorsed Michelle Nunn last month -- an awkward moment, considering her support of the Keystone XL oil pipeline -- and instead of dumping big money into the state for television ads, LCV sent two organizers to Atlanta.
They are reaching out to the organization's 23,000 members in Georgia and trying to recruit volunteers to go work for Nunn. In the last couple of weeks, LCV members have completed 70 volunteer shifts, according to Tiernan Sittenfeld, the group's senior vice president of government affairs.
Said Sittenfeld in a phone interview of the outreach to LCV members:
"We're calling them, emailing them, pointing out the ways in which [Nunn] is strong on envioronmental issues and her opponent clearly is really terrible when it comes to environmental issues. And this is going to be a close race in Georgia and important across the country in terms of the Senate, to get involved."
***
Not to be outdone by Jimmy Carter, former Sen. Sam Nunn is hitting the trail for his daughter. From the Dalton Daily Citizen:
"Our entire system is based on checks and balances. Congress is a check on the president. The Senate is a check on the House of Representatives. The Supreme Court is a check on Congress and the president," he said. "The entire system is based on people cooperating and working together. But you can't do that unless you are willing to really listen to the other person and take their concerns seriously."
***
Gov. Nathan Deal is still in some hot water over his comments that "water kills the Ebola virus."
CNN's Jake Tapper critiqued his comments on air yesterday. Said Tapper: "Yeah, that's not right governor. Chlorine kills Ebola. Bleach. But not water alone. Not ever."
Deal, during a campaign stop in south Georgia, said he's coordinating with state health officials to ensure that hospitals are prepared for a case of Ebola.
Said the governor:
"I am told that all of our hospitals have the capacity to deal with infectious diseases, and with that kind of ability and isolation we should be able to take care of them, at least in the short-term, and hopefully transfer them to facilities in the state that would be better prepared to deal with them on a long-term basis."
***
The debate over the HOPE scholarship is figuring prominently into the final stretch of the campaign for governor.
First, Democrat Jason Carter's campaign called a GOP attack claiming he wanted to scuttle the program for thousands of middle-class families a "shameful lie." Then Republicans seized on Carter's comments that he believes an income cap for eligibility for the scholarship is "too blunt an instrument."
Deal on Tuesday said Carter's support for the income cap three years ago was about politics.
"He is now admitting that his alternative was not a workable solution," said Deal. "We knew that at the very beginning. He would have had to adjust the cap on family income so low that a child of two teachers or two public safety workers would be considered too rich. It's another indication that he's playing a political game."
Carter's camp noted that his remarks didn't indicate a sudden policy shift - he was quoted in January also saying an income cap was "too blunt." And Democrats also noted that Deal also had his own reversal on HOPE, reversing a decision that raised the GPA for tech school recipients of HOPE grants from 2.0 to 3.0 amid intense Democratic pressure.
***
Now that Jimmy Carter is officially back on the campaign trail, expect to see more events like this one: The ex-president is headed to Chattanooga on Saturday to host a fundraiser for his grandson and then greet guests at an annual political dinner.
***
Atlanta Rep. David Scott is adding his name to the small but growing list of Democrats criticizing President Barack Obama on Ebola containment and calling for a travel ban to the affected countries. From the Marietta Daily Journal:
"We have to ban those flights. There's no question about it. We've got to protect the American people from this disease. It's not here — or it was not here — and the president said a week or two ago 'We don't know of any case' where it would be here. And now it's here, and it's already killed somebody."
The MDJ points out that Rep. Tom Price, R-Roswell, recently rejected the notion of a travel ban. From the article:
"This is real. The disease is real. The challenge to the world is real. But some of the ideas about how to combat this are naive and not helpful," Price said. "I don't believe that stopping flights from western Africa is a reasonable plan. The world is very small."
***
Over at Morris News Service, Walter Jones has a piece on those official, windmill-tilting write-in candidates, including three in the U.S. Senate race:
Schroder is fulfilling a promise made to her mother, according to the classified ad each write-in candidate is required to run to qualify.
"My mother died on the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Peachtree Creek. [Her grandfather fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War], and I told her I would run in the Senate race," the ad said.
***
The city-fication movement is spreading to the Georgia coast. From the Brunswick News:
A proposal to turn unincorporated St. Simons Island into a municipality failed in two nonbinding votes in the past, once in 1996 and again in 2004. Voters on St. Simons and Sea islands were asked if they favored forming their own city.
About the Author
The Latest
Featured
