Six days until vote
Wednesday marks six days until Americans vote in federal and state races on Nov. 8. All year, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has brought you the key moments in those races, and it will continue to cover the campaign's main events, examine the issues and analyze candidates' finance reports until the last ballot is counted. You can follow the developments on the AJC's politics page at http://www.myajc.com/s/news/georgia-politics/ and in the Political Insider blog at http://www.myajc.com/s/news/political-insider/. You can also track our coverage on Twitter at https://twitter.com/GAPoliticsNews or Facebook at https://facebook.com/gapoliticsnewsnow.
The last time a Democratic presidential candidate won Georgia it was because a third-party candidate pulled double-digit support. And the last time a Republican U.S. Senate incumbent was forced into a runoff it was because of a stronger-than-expected Libertarian challenge.
Third-party candidates hope for another solid showing in Georgia, seeking to capitalize on skepticism and mistrust toward Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Libertarian Gary Johnson, who swung through Atlanta on Wednesday, said in an interview that he was the only “principled” candidate on the ballot.
“From the day that she takes office, it will be impeachment proceedings. There will be the drumbeat of impeachment from the first day,” Johnson said of Clinton. “And if Trump is inaugurated, he’ll be in court over child rape.”
Johnson, making his first campaign stop in Georgia, was referring to the FBI's ongoing probe of emails that could be linked to Clinton's private server and federal lawsuits filed by a woman who claimed the GOP nominee raped her two decades ago when she was 13. Trump has flatly denied the allegations, and his attorney has called them "completely frivolous."
Republicans are hoping they can hold their base together enough to stave off a repeat of 1992, when Ross Perot’s solid showing helped Bill Clinton sweep Georgia, and 2008, when Allen Buckley took the U.S. Senate race into overtime.
Libertarian candidates typically poll highest early in the race and plummet back to earth as Election Day nears. And analysts from the two major parties expect that third-party support to crash again next week.
But Johnson, a former Republican governor of New Mexico, continues to flirt with double digits in the most recent Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll and other surveys. And the AJC poll showed Buckley notching 11 percent in the race against U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson and Democrat Jim Barksdale.
Compare that with 2012, when Johnson barely managed to crack 1 percent of the vote when he ran. Buckley managed about 3.4 percent of the vote during his 2008 Senate campaign against incumbent Saxby Chambliss and Democrat Jim Martin.
“The door is wide open for a financially conservative, socially tolerant party,” Buckley told a few hundred cheering supporters at a Johnson rally Wednesday in Midtown Atlanta. “This is it. This is our opening.”
Several of the Libertarian supporters interviewed Wednesday at Johnson’s rally remained concerned about his foreign policy chops, a reference to his “Aleppo moment,” when he failed to identify the war-torn Syrian city. In the interview, Johnson said “gaffes are going to happen,” but he said he’s boned up on his studies of international conflict.
Many of the supporters at the Libertarian rally, though, said they were disenchanted Republicans who couldn’t stomach Trump and didn’t trust Clinton.
Josh Clarke, a 25-year-old contractor, was a Rand Paul supporter in the GOP primary who couldn’t side with Trump.
“He’s basically the most common-sense presidential candidate that there is. He’s for personal liberty. He’s against foreign wars,” Clarke said of Johnson. “Trump is crazy, and Clinton is corrupt. So I’m voting for Gary.”
Lee Tallman, a sales representative from Dunwoody, said he’s left with no other choice but to side with a third-party candidate for the first time.
“I am so unhappy with the choices I have,” he said. “And the two-party system needs a dose of competition.”
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