Four years ago, Tim Lee turned a ton of money, the backing of the business community, and the all-important designation of “incumbent” into a resounding victory in the race for Cobb Commission chairman.
Tuesday, he once again had all of that going for him but barely hung on to force a July 26 runoff election.
Mike Boyce — the same man who lost to Lee by 12,000 votes in 2012 — came within 337 votes of winning the election outright in this year’s Republican primary, with 49 percent of the vote. Lee’s 40 percent placed him more than 3,000 votes behind.
And had retired businessman Larry Savage not been in the race, Boyce almost certainly would be chairman-elect today, said Kerwin Swint, chair of Kennesaw State’s Political Science Department.
Savage, who ran a campaign similar to Boyce’s in that it was critical of the chairman’s handling of the Atlanta Braves deal, garnered 3,793 votes.
“People like Mike; they trust him. And he’s done a heck of a job of getting out and meeting people,” Swint said. “I think that was crucial. In local races, you can win that way. You can win by knocking on doors and making phone calls. You don’t need to outspend, necessarily.”
Boyce has largely run a grass-roots campaign since entering the race in January. According to his website, his team visited more than 23,000 homes throughout the county and talked to 47,000 voters on the phone. He said the campaign will have the same approach over the next two months.
“This is what got us here, and this is how we’re going to win the runoff,” Boyce said. “This campaign has shown that when you reach out and touch people, it resonates with them and they support you.”
Lee enters the runoff with a tremendous monetary advantage — $171,000 on hand compared to $11,000 for Boyce, according to March 31 campaign finance reports. In addition, two-day finance reports filed since mid-April show Lee picked up an additional $56,000 in the run up to the election, compared to Boyce's $5,000.
On top of that, a political action committee called Cobb First formed April 29 and has been airing television commercials on Fox News touting Lee’s conservatism.
But the next two months will be about more than just money and glossy fliers, said Bill Byrne, former Cobb chairman who lost to Lee in the 2012 runoff. Byrne, who supports Boyce, said the key to winning a runoff is identifying voters who will return to the polls in the middle of summer.
Of the 73,166 people who voted in the 2012 Republican primary, only 38 percent of them cast ballots in that runoff.
“It’s going to take 30 days to get a list of the voters and identify the districts they came from, then go back to those specific people you went after the first time and make sure they go back to the polls in July,” Byrne said. “That’s why it’s the last two weeks that will make the big difference.”
Swint expects Lee’s backing from the business community to “double down” on financial contributions, but said that might not be enough.
“So far as I can tell, Lee’s campaign was almost entirely mass media,” Swint said. “I think he needs more grass-roots appeal. I think he needs to knock on doors.”
Like any incumbent, “He may be confronted by people, but it’s worth the risk,” Swint said.
Neither Lee nor his campaign advisers have responded to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s requests for interviews. But Heath Garrett, a Lee supporter whose company has a $168,000-a-year lobbying contract with the county, told the AJC on Wednesday that he thinks the Braves poor season might have had an impact on the election results.
Lee helped engineer the public investment in SunTrust Park — a decision that has been a main plank of Boyce’s platform, because commissioners did not allow a referendum on $376 million in stadium debt.
“The Braves’ situation and what they’re doing on the field absolutely has an impact on this race,” Garrett said.
Coming Sunday: A closer look at how the Braves’ stadium deal impacted the Cobb Commission chairman’s race.
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