SAVANNAH -- Eileen Braden of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce did not come bearing a big check along with the Chamber's endorsement of Buddy Carter in the First Congressional District runoff.
Decisions on whether to launch an advertising buy, Braden said, have not yet been made. But the Chamber has taken notice that its frequent foil, the arch-conservative Club For Growth, has plunked down $358,000 on ads that are blanketing the airwaves here pillorying Carter as a "liberal" -- a label Carter finds absurd.
Braden said the Chamber will decide soon if and how to drop an independent expenditure in the race before the July 22 runoff, "especially given recent developments."
The biggest recent development is the Club, which is backing Bob Johnson, a Savannah surgeon who is appealing to more of a tea party crowd and has a pugnacious style. Club spokesman Barney Keller said "there is a difference between being pro-business and pro-free market." He pointed to Carter's support of a voter referendum on the T-SPLOST sales tax to promote transportation and the Chamber's support of increasing the gas tax to aid the Highway Trust Fund.
But the Club has come out on the losing side of several battles with the Chamber this year, including in the Mississippi U.S. Senate runoff where Sen. Thad Cochran narrowly prevailed.
"We’ll continue to fight in every single race," Keller said. "Some we win, some we lose. But we’d rather have the fight than not have it at all."
Braden talked about Carter's longtime record in the state House and Senate promoting Chamber priorities such as the Port of Savannah expansion. She said she hoped her visit to a small business that makes promotional goods would "cut through" the ad war with some "earned media."
Some paid media -- as the Chamber has done for Jack Kingston in the Senate race to the tune of $2.33 million -- would lift the spirits of the Carter campaign and make the Georgia coastline the latest battleground in the national Republican civil war.
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