The current runoff between Chambliss & Martin sent Dick Pettys back to the archives & other reference materials for a little memory tuneup.

Dick Pettys writes in InsiderAdvantage Georgia:

The current runoff between incumbent Republican Saxby Chambliss and Democratic challenger Jim Martin sent me back to the archives and other reference materials for a little memory tuneup. (Hey! The last big runoff was 16 years ago when Paul Coverdell upended Wyche Fowler.)

Herewith, some political trivia about the race:

* The seat that’s up for grabs is referred to as the Few line of succession, named for William Few, who held it from 1789 to 1795. Robert Toombs, who would become Secretary of State for the Confederacy, was in the seat when Georgia seceded. Richard Russell held the seat from 1933 until his death in 1971. Sam Nunn held it from 1973 until his retirement in 1996. Democrat Max Cleland narrowly beat Republican Guy Millner for the post in 1996 and, himself, was defeated in 2002 by Saxby Chambliss.

* The 1992 Fowler-Coverdell runoff was for the other seat, known as the Gunn line of succession for James Gunn, who held it from 1789 to 1801. Other holders of the office have included former Confederate Gen. and Gov. John B. Gordon and a pair of senators who, between them, held the post for almost 60 years – Walter F. George and Herman Talmadge. Talmadge, battered politically, lost to Mack Mattingly, a Republican, in 1980. Mattingly lost to Fowler, a Democrat, in 1986. Fowler lost to Coverdell, a Republican, in 1992. (Zell Miller was appointed and then elected to fill the unexpired term following Coverdell’s death. Johnny Isakson holds the seat now.)

* The rule requiring runoffs if no candidate receives a majority of the vote was imposed following the 1966 election of Gov. Lester Maddox. In that election, no one hit the magic number due to a write-in campaign by former Gov. Ellis Arnall. Under rules in effect at the time, the election then defaulted to the Democrat-controlled Legislature, which elected Maddox. Election law was changed thereafter to require a runoff. Georgia is the only state that has this requirement in a general election.

* Aha. But should that be a majority or a plurality? At first the threshold was set at 50 percent. But the problem with that became clear to Democrats in the 1992 election in which Fowler got 49.23 percent, Coverdell got 47.67 percent and the Libertarian, Jim Hudson, got 3.1 percent. Because no one got 50 percent, the state’s first-ever statewide runoff was required for a major office. And in that race, Fowler lost by a mere 16,237 votes out of the 1.2 million cast.

* The solution? Lower the threshold to 45 percent. The Democrat-controlled Legislature did just that in time for the next U.S. Senate race in 1996. Cleland won by a scant 30,000 votes out of nearly 2.3 million cast, and only with 48.9 percent of the vote. But that exceeded the reduced threshold and there was no runoff.

* Had the 45 percent threshold remained in effect this year, Chambliss wouldn’t be in a runoff. He received 49.8 percent of the vote on Nov. 4. But the Republican-controlled Legislature had switched the standard back to 50 percent in 2005.

* One more little piece of trivia. The architect of the Coverdell effort in 1992 was Tom Perdue, who also is Chambliss’ chief political advisor for this runoff.