Democrats Go for a Senate Gain as G.O.P. Rivals Vie in Georgia

Jonathan Weisman writes in The New York Times:

The flock of Republican candidates vying to succeed retiring Senator Saxby Chambliss gathered last weekend in this small-town birthplace of Georgia’s legendary statesman, Senator Richard Russell, to appeal to the restive electorate.

Reverence for Washington — where the name of Mr. Russell, who died in 1971, adorns the oldest Senate office building — was not high on the agenda.
      

“Government is out of control,” said Representative Paul Broun, pledging to rid the capital of the Education Department, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Internal Revenue Service, and, of course, President Obama’s health program. “And both parties are guilty.”

      

“The Republican Senate has a bad case of curvature of the spine, and I think it’s long past time we put some vertebrae in that spine to straighten the darned thing out,” countered Representative Phil Gingrey. “It’s time to stop all this wishy-washy stuff.”

      

It has gone that way for weeks in a field of more than a half dozen fiery contenders who will compete in a wide open primary in the spring. And as each Republican one-ups the other’s indignation over what many insiders see as their party’s flexibility and competes to be the most conservative conservative, national Democrats see a slim but tantalizing chance to steal a Republican Senate seat — and possibly save their majority.

      

Desperate to put at least one Republican seat in play, Democrats are coalescing behind their chosen candidate, Michelle Nunn, and hoping that Republican zeal will rebound in her favor.

      

The Democratic field has been virtually cleared for Ms. Nunn, the unassuming, largely unknown daughter of Georgia’s popular former Senator Sam Nunn, a Democrat. This will allow her to play to the center, preach bipartisanship and hope fervently that in their pursuit of conservative votes, her Republican opponents will render themselves toxic to more moderate and independent Georgians. Call it a prayer for a Todd Akin, the Missouri Republican who talked his way out of a Senate seat in 2012.

      

“I think that’s what this contest will ultimately decide: Where does the majority of Georgians stand?” asked Ms. Nunn in an interview at a downtown Atlanta bakery where she took her sandwich to go.

She continued, “Do they want someone who is going to try and work together to solve problems on behalf of Georgians or do they want someone who is focused on saying they want to stand their ground and will fail to compromise in any fashion?”

      

The numbers tell why Democrats are preparing to essentially put all of their Georgia hopes in a soft-spoken, bespectacled candidate who has never held elective office — and how much will have to break their way to win. Assuming a special Senate election in New Jersey this fall goes Democratic, Republicans will have to win six seats in 2014 to take the Senate.

      

Democrats start in deep trouble in three Republican states with retiring Democratic veterans — West Virginia, South Dakota and Montana. Two incumbent Democrats, Mark Pryor of Arkansas and Mark Begich of Alaska, face tough re-election fights against credible opponents in Republican states. If all five flip, Republicans would need one more in a tough-but-broad playing field that includes North Carolina, Louisiana, Michigan and Colorado.

      

If Democrats could take a Republican seat, it would provide much-needed insurance. But only two seem remotely possible. One, in Kentucky, is occupied by the wily, well-financed Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell. The other is in Georgia, a state where a growing urban, minority and immigrant population has been coveted by Democrats, but where Mitt Romney beat Mr. Obama comfortably, 53 percent to 46 percent, in a high-turnout election.

      

That spread “means nothing in 2014,” an off-year election with a president losing popularity, Mr. Broun said in an interview at the Winder Lions Club, where the Republican contest was in full swing ahead of next May’s primary. Black-clad college students hustled into cheerleader-pyramid position to promote Mr. Broun’s candidacy. The Yargo Community Concert Band’s saxophone section played the national anthem. Senate and House candidates pressed the flesh. “FairTaxers” hawked literature on a national sales tax and volunteers planted campaign signs.

       

“A Republican is going to win the U.S. Senate race in the state of Georgia, period,” Mr. Broun said.

 

 That is the dominant sentiment in the state, but there are worries. Mr. Broun, a family doctor from North Georgia, recently proclaimed his medical school training on evolution, embryology and the Big Bang theory to be “lies straight from the pit of hell.”

 

Early this year, Mr. Gingrey, another medical doctor, said Mr. Akin was “partly right” when he said raped women almost never became pregnant.

 

Karen Handel, a former Georgia secretary of state, campaigning in Dawsonville, Ga., Tuesday night, spoke of working successfully with Democrats on the state’s largest county commission, Fulton. But in the next breath, she embraced the Senate’s Republican hard liners — Ted Cruz of Texas, Mike Lee of Utah and Rand Paul of Kentucky — and backed their effort to shut down the government this fall rather than finance implementation of the health care law. Perhaps her most notable claim to fame was her effort to separate Susan G. Komen for the Cure from Planned Parenthood’s breast cancer screening, a public relations disaster that led to her resignation as the breast cancer group’s vice president of public policy.

      

Representative Jack Kingston, a senior member of the House Appropriations Committee with less bluster than some of his competitors, declared nonetheless that he would not let any of his rivals “get to the right” of him, even as he expressed misgivings about the brewing battle.

      

“If we come out of the primary wounded, divided and broke, then it does give the Democrats some daylight,” he acknowledged in an interview.

      

That daylight could only dawn if Ms. Nunn were able to energize Democrats in Georgia’s urban centers — especially black, Latino and immigrant voters — to register and come out in force, as she runs up a sizable gender gap in the sprawling Atlanta suburbs gaining out-of-state families, Democratic strategists say.

      

She co-founded Hands on Atlanta, a volunteer organization, and led the Points of Light Foundation, the volunteer group started by former President George H. W. Bush. Organizing is in her blood, she says. Her first effort after declaring her candidacy was to mobilize thousands of volunteers — even before she develops a policy platform beyond a promise of bipartisan cooperation and fiscal rectitude.
       

“Getting people to think they have a stake in the electoral process, asking people to volunteer, that’s what is going to make a difference,” she said.

      

Her father’s legacy as a moderate Democrat and influential defense hawk could also help earn some support outside the Democratic strongholds and suburban sprawl. The numbers are there if she can mobilize them, even Republicans say.

       

“The challenge is, the further you get to the right, the harder it is to get back to the middle,” said Eric Tanenblatt, a Republican strategist and major party donor in Atlanta. “And with changing demographic and a lot more independents coming into the state, I worry the Republican Party is losing sight of that.”

       

But the Georgia electorate is unique in the Deep South, bifurcated between rural and small-town voters as conservative and as activist as any in the country and metropolitan Atlanta, a polyglot city that just keeps growing. It is not clear how moderation could sell in the primary, so candidates are not even trying.

       

Roy Roberts, chairman of the Walton County Republican Party who was in Winder for the candidates’ barbecue, reflected on Mr. Broun’s views on evolution and the Big Bang.

      

“He’s perceived to be a little nutty,” he said, “but he votes right.”