Two of Tuesday’s biggest vote-getters turned out to be two of Tuesday’s biggest losers.
Michelle Nunn and Jason Carter won more than 200,000 votes apiece in their primary contests, making official what everyone knew all along: They’ll headline the state’s Democratic ticket this fall. But it was what happened on the Republican side that probably sealed their fates for November, in the negative.
In the Senate race, Nunn’s candidacy is based largely on name recognition from her famous father and the possibility she would face one of the GOP’s more rhetorically challenged contestants: Phil Gingrey and Paul Broun. But those congressmen finished a distant fourth and fifth, respectively, in the seven-person field.
Meanwhile Carter, also relying heavily on his surname, surely hoped to see some signs of dissension within the GOP ranks as Gov. Nathan Deal faced two primary challengers. Instead, the governor easily dismissed a statewide elected official and a tea party-backed mayor with 72 percent of the vote.
It looks like the bluing, or even purpling, of Georgia will have to wait.
In David Perdue and Jack Kingston, Georgia Republicans are down to two center-right, business-friendly candidates for the Senate — just the opposite of what Nunn was banking on. Neither man is naturally inclined toward right-wing flamethrowing, so their temptation to stray too far from the middle should be limited.
The run-off will largely pit Perdue’s business career against Kingston’s years in Congress. Neither record is likely to turn off Georgia’s mostly right-leaning independents, no matter how hard Democrats try to portray them as extremists.
In fact, the most damaging thing about any of the three remaining candidates for Senate is that — whether she likes it or not — Nunn is effectively running to be the 50th vote for Barack Obama and Harry Reid. That’s true no matter how many times Nunn’s advertisements flash pictures of George H.W. Bush, tout GOP policies or leave out the word “Democrat.”
Running as “Democrat lite” hasn’t worked for most Republicans outside Georgia. Running as “Republican lite” is unlikely to work better here. Give Nunn this much credit: She didn’t take the primary bait to tack leftward, egged on by the 10,000 or so Georgia leftists who gave Branko “Dr. Rad” Radulovacki just 3 percent of the party’s primary vote.
But that won’t be enough as questions about Obamacare, gun control and taxes eventually demand clearer answers from Nunn.
In the race for governor, Deal’s opponents tried the two main lines of attack Carter is sure to try: ethics and education. Neither worked any better in this primary than they did in the 2010 general election.
Carter can’t promise schools much more than a procedural gimmick — putting the education budget in a different document than the rest of the state’s spending — without explaining who he’d tax to put more money in that education budget.
Higher taxes don’t jibe with Carter’s self-description as a fiscal conservative. And he has to run concurrently with a constitutional amendment, which he supported as a legislator, to cap the state’s income tax rate at 6 percent. The GOP’s campaign promoting that amendment is about to crank up.
Mistakes will be made in campaigns that still have almost six months to go. But the likelihood of damaging GOP mistakes shrunk a great deal this week.
