When Lee Anderson’s campaign workers call voters who don’t recognize the name of the Republican challenger to U.S. Rep. John Barrow, they reply: “He’s the tractor guy.”
The tractors are on every Anderson sign and sticker. A green John Deere 6100D was parked next to a small rally Friday evening in Dublin, part of Anderson’s “tractor tour.”
The state representative from Grovetown frequently reminds audiences that he is a hay farmer who grew up milking cows. Barrow, by contrast, is a Harvard-trained trial lawyer originally from the liberal bastion of Athens — though his voting record since winning the seat in 2004 has been one of the most centrist in the House.
Anderson hopes that his down-home sensibility and alignment with national Republicans — the Mitt Romney sticker on his Ford F-150 is bigger than the Anderson sticker — will carry him to victory against Barrow in a district newly redrawn to favor the GOP.
The race is the most competitive congressional contest in Georgia, has drawn $4.8 million in outside spending and has been the target of the state’s Republicans since they started working on the district lines after the 2010 census.
In line with national GOP
Anderson, the only candidate in the four-way primary with experience in elected office, triumphed by running up big margins in the rural areas of the district. He started on the Columbia County school board, moved to the County Commission and then to the state House in 2009. His Farm Bureau connections have served him well in Middle Georgia.
His strength is in retail politics, but Anderson has drawn some criticism for his ineloquence and his reluctance to debate Barrow.
Augusta Republican Gwen Fulcher Young, the wife of former Augusta Mayor Bob Young, compared Anderson to Honey Boo Boo, a child beauty pageant contestant and reality television star from rural Georgia, saying he would embarrass the state in Washington. When her quip was reported in The Augusta Chronicle, she said she heard support from fellow Republicans.
“There are an awful lot of people, frankly, like my husband that aren’t talking about it,” she said, “but they are very troubled by the lack of a better option.”
Anderson responded: “I think she’s very childish. I’m beyond a childish attitude. I’m here to serve the people in District 12. I’m not here to have your little stabs at each other.”
A prominent Republican in the more rural part of the district, who did not want to be named for fear of a backlash from the party, said he and several other Republicans in the area feel the same way as Mrs. Young. Many of them still refuse to vote for a Democrat but will leave the congressional race blank, “which is a win for Barrow,” he said.
There are signs that many Republicans are crossing over to support Barrow, as two polls have shown a neck-and-neck race even as the presidential contest in the district favors Romney. On Friday the nonpartisan Washington-based Rothenberg Political Report changed its assessment of the race to “tossup/tilt Democrat.”
Barrow says that if Anderson cannot speak with authority, he cannot adequately look out for the district’s interests in Washington. The congressman cites his own advocacy on behalf of the Plant Vogtle nuclear plant and deepening of the Savannah River as complicated initiatives that required good communication skills.
Glen Hill of the Heart of Georgia Tea Party Patriots, who has been helping Anderson organize in Middle Georgia, sees it otherwise.
“What do you want?” he said. “Someone who’s going to fight for the country or someone who can speak well?”
Anderson embraces the contrast on the stump.
“It’s nothing fancy here,” he told a group of senior citizens in Dublin. “I’m not no slick talker. I’m not no big lawyer. But look what the lawyers, the mess they got us into now. We need good working business people to go to Washington.”
Anderson’s talks are peppered with calls to balance the budget, repeal the 2010 health care law and extract more American fossil fuel — in step with the national Republican Party, which has been firmly in his corner. House leaders have raised money for him, and the National Republican Congressional Committee has reserved $1.4 million worth of advertising time to attack Barrow.
Anderson declined to name any area in which he would differ with party leaders. He also could not single out a specific budget cut, aside from a 20 percent proposed pay cut to members of Congress. He vowed never to cut Medicare, Social Security or the military, and he has proposed maintaining education spending. He also has supported Republican budgets authored by Rep. Paul Ryan, now the vice presidential nominee, that include large cuts in domestic programs while eventually converting Medicare into a voucher-type system for future beneficiaries.
‘Old-fashioned Democrat’
Barrow, meanwhile, is running against much of what Congress has done lately. He voted against the health care law and against the Ryan budget.
Anderson reminds voters that Barrow also voted against repealing the health care law — Barrow said the law should be restructured, as there are some positive aspects to it — and voted for the 2009 stimulus law.
Barrow’s foes accuse him of double talk, and they got ample fodder when in a fundraising solicitation to Democrats Barrow noted that “I have supported the president and the Democratic leadership 85 percent of the time.” In a television ad Barrow proclaimed that he voted with Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor 54 percent of the time. Both numbers are accurate because so many House votes are minor measures that both sides agree on.
Barrow has put his $2.5 million fundraising haul to use with a series of cheeky ads that often feature him speaking directly to the camera about his independence from both parties and wasteful programs he would cut.
The ads left an impression on Anthony Johnson, a student at Augusta’s Paine College: He thought Barrow was no longer a Democrat, and Barrow had to correct him when he spoke at the college last week.
When asked whether he wants to give that impression, Barrow said no, and his party will be obvious on the ballot. But the national party’s brand, he said, has been tarnished by liberals in Congress.
“I’m an old-fashioned Democrat, a Georgia Democrat, and a lot of folks who work at it can remember what it’s like, but it’s not the first thing that comes to people’s minds,” Barrow said between bites of fried chicken at a country buffet restaurant in Swainsboro.
“And you can’t blame ‘em,” he said. “What they’re taking as their guide is what they see on TV. There are still plenty of us around, but we don’t have our fair share of seats in Congress because of the way they have drawn the district lines.”
The new lines forced Barrow to move from Savannah to Augusta and put him in a difficult electoral spot, but he said more districts across the country should look like his. He proposes taking redistricting out of the hands of the parties, which he said would result in more balanced districts.
As the last white Democrat in the House from the Deep South (Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina), Barrow has attracted national interest. He is one of the last remaining Blue Dog Democrats, a group consisting mostly of Southern moderates who frequently break with leadership.
“John represents the best that we can hope for at this point,” Richmond County Democratic Party Chairman Lowell Greenbaum said. “And that he got a rotten deal (in redistricting) and that people understand that he’s had to make decisions that will help him be re-elected, although some of us don’t like all the decisions he made.”
Greenbaum’s Augusta office was festooned with President Barack Obama paraphernalia, which Barrow tends to avoid. Anderson puts their names together at every opportunity and has attempted to put Barrow on the spot by refusing to debate him until Barrow declares on television that he is voting for Obama.
Barrow has said who he is voting for in several interviews, but his replies using “the head of my ticket” rather than the president’s name are insufficient, Anderson said.
There are also strategic reasons that the viewing public will miss out on The Harvard Lawyer vs. The Tractor Guy.
“If you were going to try to defend yourself in a court case and you were not an attorney, would you want to go up against a trial attorney?” said U.S. Rep. Lynn Westmoreland of Coweta County. “He can twist the facts or whatever and I just don’t know if that would be the best thing, but I think it’s up to Lee.”
