Tom Crawford's thoughts on the recent 10th Congressional District election

Late Tuesday night when Paul Broun was leading James Marlow by only 32 votes, I did a post that said in part:

"Damn those other two Democrats who ran, and regardless of how it comes out, thanks Terry Holley for dropping out."

Tom Crawford's thoughts about the election are as follows:

The results of Tuesday's special election in the 10th Congressional District show that Jane Kidd, the Democratic Party's new state chairman, still has a lot of work to do in her efforts to rebuild the party as a viable political organization.

Democrats missed an opportunity to get one of their own into the July 17 runoff election because the party leadership was unable to accomplish the very basic task of "clearing the field" for their anointed candidate.

When congressman Charlie Norwood died in February and people began maneuvering to enter the race to replace him, Kidd and her cohorts wanted the party to unite behind one Democratic candidate and keep fringe candidates out of the election to maximize that person's chances of advancing beyond the primary.

The party settled upon its candidate, internet business executive James Marlow, and Terry Holley of Columbia County finally agreed not to get into the race and siphon off votes that Marlow would need in a heavily Republican district.

Democrats were unable to keep the field completely cleared, however. Two African American women, Denise Freeman and Evita Paschall, qualified as Democrats and effectively killed Marlow's chances.

Freeman and Paschall were fringe candidates who were unable to raise money and had absolutely no chance of winning the election, but they drew more than 4,300 votes combined, or about 8 percent of the ballots cast in Tuesday's election. Marlow finished less than 200 votes behind Republican Paul Broun in the race for second place and a spot on the runoff ballot.

If Democratic Party officials could have persuaded Freeman and Paschall to stay out of the race, Marlow would have been the only Democrat and likely would have garnered enough votes to finish ahead of Broun.

Of course, Jim Whitehead, the first-place finisher with more than 43 percent of the vote, could plausibly argue that he might have won the race without a runoff if not for the profusion of fringe candidates running as Republicans and Libertarians.

Bill Greene, Nate Pulliam, Erik Underwood, Mark Myers, and Libertarian Jim Sendelbach drew a combined total of 4,073 votes, or about 7.4 percent of the vote. If the GOP establishment had been able to clear them out of the field, Whitehead conceivably could have attracted just enough votes to cross the 50 percent plus one level.