It's Almost As Though The Georgia GOP Has Figured Out A Way To Elect Michelle Nunn To The Senate

Sam Nunn (L), Michelle Nunn (R)

Virginia Republicans who weren't paying close enough attention are still wondering how their party got saddled with such radical extremists at the top of their ticket. Neo-fascist Ken Cuccinelli and certifiably insane sociopath E.W. Jackson are not going to attract any of the independent swing voters Virginia Republicans need to win statewide, not even against a Democratic candidate as patently unattractive as Terry McAuliffe. But there was no primary. The Cooch manipulated the system so that a nominating convention, dominated by extremists and radical ideologues, would determine who the candidates were. That was a disaster for Virginia Republicans-- and some Georgia Republicans would like to follow suit.

With Michelle Nunn looking more likely to run for the open Senate seat-- and looking like she could beat any of the extremists, especially Handel or Broun, the far right of the Georgia GOP is doing exactly what Nunn's advisors were hoping they'd do: follow Virginia down the yellow brick road... to electoral oblivion. The far right activists are petrified that Rove and other "pragmatists" are trying to manipulate the process in favor of someone who could win a general election.

Georgia Republicans are weighing an election shift that could reshape the state’s political landscape by giving grass-roots activists tremendous new clout in picking the party’s nominee.

State GOP leaders plan to vote Saturday whether to take a first step away from the summer primaries that elect the party’s nominee and toward allowing a convention of party insiders to choose the candidate for statewide and national office. Consider it an audition for a more sweeping electoral change.

Not surprisingly, some elected Republican leaders and assorted power brokers are wary of an overhaul they fear could disenfranchise the roughly 700,000 people who vote in party primaries and cede power to a smaller group of activists.

But supporters say the change is needed to offset what the resolution calls the “power of Big Money and Big Media” and give more say to the activists who feel they’ve been ignored during the GOP’s ascendancy.

“This is an effort to try to remove money from the nominating contest, and some who aren’t in support of it are the ones who enjoy the privilege to dictate who will be our nominee through their money,” said Dale Jackson, a LaGrange businessman who chairs the state GOP’s 3rd district.

“Right now there are a very few people who are participating, and those are the people who can afford to spend hundreds if not millions of dollars to influence who wins the nomination.”

The pitch comes at a pivotal moment for Georgia Republicans. Gov. Nathan Deal and other leaders routinely acknowledge the party needs to broaden its message or risk facing a resurgent Democratic Party emboldened by a growing minority population. And the heated competition for an open U.S. Senate spot triggered a race to the right that some fear could give Democrats a better chance at seizing the seat.

...The party’s establishment wing hasn’t been keen on the idea, and some point to Virginia as a prime example why. Virginia’s Republicans selected E.W. Jackson, a little-known minister and attorney, as their candidate for lieutenant governor despite controversial comments about gays and abortion that could haunt him during the general election.

“I’m not sure less democracy is the solution, at this point in our history, to whatever ills or frustrations are out there,” House Speaker David Ralston said this week. “I can’t support that and I don’t support it. I re-read the resolution this morning and I’m not sure what the rationale for it might be.”

Brant Frost V, the Coweta County GOP chairman who brought the resolution, said his reasoning is simple: The grass-roots base that powered the GOP for generations during its political exile has been “discriminated against” as the party came to power in the past decade. Enough members of the party’s 16-member resolution committee agreed, setting up Saturday’s vote.

“We’ve seen the cost of a primary spiral out of control, and that means you’re excluding candidates who can’t raise the money,” said the 23-year-old, whose family has been influential in GOP politics. “Politics is like a stew. You’ve got to have money, support, the ground game. But we’ve so spiced it up with the money angle that we’ve completely deadened the effect of all the other essential ingredients.”

...Top Republicans, though, are wary of any changes. Ralston, a Blue Ridge Republican, said the voters in his North Georgia district spend their nights going to Little League games and weekends hunting and fishing-- not at party meetings and insider conventions.

“Are we going to tell them that if they don’t have time to be an activist then we are going to disenfranchise them?” he asked. “I’m not going there.”

He may have no choice-- and that would open the door further to a crackpot like Paul "Lies Straight From the Pit of Hell" Broun, a John Bircher, Karen Handel or Phil Gingrey, all fringe candidates Nunn could beat statewide. Although there's another Democrat running as well, Branko Radulovacki-- "call me Dr. Rad"-- an Atlanta psychiatrist, Republicans are blasting away at Nunn.

“National Republicans are so terrified of the possibility of a Michelle Nunn candidacy that they are already misleading the public about her and her record,” said Matt Canter... at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. “The divisive Tea Party primary and the demographic changes in Georgia, make this seat one of the best pick up opportunities for Democrats this cycle,” he said.

This is what the Georgia neo-fascist/KKK/Bircher grassroots wants to send to the U.S. Senate:

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Many People Think Georgia Will Elect A Democratic Senator Long Before Texas Does

Future Senator Michelle Nunn and ex-Pres. George H.W. Bush

Zac McCrary and Brian Stryker from the Blue Dog polling firm, Anzalone Research, see Georgia turning into a purple state as soon as 2010. Demographics really are destiny, they assert. Florida, Virginia, Nevada, and Colorado have trended Democrat and now Texas is moving in that direction.

Texas is no doubt becoming more Democratic by the day, and groups like Battleground Texas are already hard at work smartly building the infrastructure to help make Texas competitive. However, demographic and election data indicate the same trends that will make Texas a swing state will even more immediately put Georgia's 16 electoral votes in play, expanding Democrats' paths to an electoral vote majority.

In 2012, Georgia was the second most competitive state carried by Mitt Romney (+7.8% Romney)-- behind only North Carolina (+2.0% Romney)... And in 2008, Georgia was the third most competitive state won by McCain, behind only Missouri and Montana... Obama's Georgia vote share declined in 2012, as did his national vote share. However, the Obama vote share decreased less in Georgia than it did nationwide, and Obama's 2012 Georgia performance came even closer to his nationwide vote share (5.57% vs. national) than did his 2008 performance (-5.99%).

...Most fundamentally, Georgia is quickly becoming less white and less rural. In 2000, Georgia's population was 63% white; as of the 2010 Census the state's population is 56% white. Of the state's 1.5 million new residents between 2000 and 2010, more than 80% (1.2 million, or 81%) were non-white.

Over the past decade, the 6% growth among Georgia's white population pales in comparison to the 26% growth rate among African Americans. This is in stark contrast to the growth patterns of the 1990s, when Georgia's white population grew by more than double that rate (16%). Since 1990, Georgia has gained more than 1.2 million African American residents and has served, according to the Wall Street Journal, as a "magnet for black professionals" from other parts of the country.

However, Georgia's increased competitiveness is not driven solely by African American voters. Georgia's Hispanic population grew by 96% over the last decade-- a growth rate double the national average and second only to North Carolina's. From 1990-2010, the state's Hispanic population has risen from roughly 100,000 to more than 800,000-- now totaling 9.1% of the state's population. Additionally, Georgia's Asian American community grew by 81% from 2000-2010 and has almost quintupled since 1990.

The epicenter of these demographic changes is the Atlanta metro area. As this area grows more diverse, it is becoming more Democratic and expanding its footprint on the state's body politic. Metro Atlanta comprised roughly 52% of the electorate in the 2000 presidential race, but 54% in the 2012 election (and likely 56% in the 2020 election). Of metro Atlanta's roughly one million new residents over the past decade, 90% are non-white (54% African American / 31% Hispanic). This growth reduced the metro area's white percentage from 60% in 2000 to 51% in 2010. Conversely, African Americans (from 29% to 32% of the area's population) and Hispanics (from 6% to 10%) have undergone a population boom. The electoral effects have been unmistakable. In 2012, Obama actually took a majority (50.3%) of the two-party vote in the metro area, roughly six points higher than John Kerry's 44% in 2004.

...Over the next ten years, Georgia will likely add 500,000 more Hispanic and 600,000 more African American residents. The 2008 electorate (that yielded just a 5-point McCain win), is on track to be several points less white (from 65% to 61%), more African American (from 30% to 32%) and more Hispanic (from 3% to 5%). These projections indicate that a 2020 Democratic nominee who performs the same among each racial subgroup as Obama did in 2008 (according to exit polls) would take roughly 50% of the statewide vote, reminiscent of the Obama campaign's narrow victory in North Carolina in 2008.

While Georgia Democrats have struggled in recent statewide elections, Democrats have a solid bench of rising stars including Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, Congressman John Barrow, state legislators Jason Carter, Stacey Abrams, Scott Holcomb, and non-profit founder/CEO Michelle Nunn, among others. (Disclosure: Kasim Reed and Jason Carter are Anzalone Liszt Grove clients). Such Democratic candidates will be well-positioned to run for Governor or Senate as the state's political hue shifts from red to purple. And while the Atlanta-media market is very expensive, a statewide television buy in Georgia is roughly the cost of a North Carolina buy and 20% less expensive than a statewide buy in Virginia. A Georgia buy is also just one-third the cost of a statewide broadcast buy in the Lone Star State. As Georgia's political winds shift, Democrats should be able to field strong candidates with the ability to marshal the necessary resources to communicate with voters in a robust way over the next decade and beyond.

So what about next year? Can the daughter of beloved and legendary 4-term Democratic Senator Sam Nunn, Michelle Nunn, win the open Senate seat the crazy teabaggers drove Saxby Chambliss into giving up? This week Kyle Trygstad of Roll Call took a hard look at what's shaping up to be one of only three long-short opportunities for Democratic take-overs in red states, the other two being Kentucky (Miss McConnell) and South Carolina (Lindsey Graham). Trygstad agrees with the Anazalone team that "a surge in the black and Hispanic populations around Atlanta has altered the political outlook in Georgia’s statewide races for decades to come."

“I believe that Georgia is in a great position to go for a Democrat not only in 2014, but 2016 as well,” said Tharon Johnson, a top Democratic consultant in the state and President Barack Obama’s national Southern regional director in 2012.

Next year, the party’s hopes rest on the perfect political storm-- including the quality of likely candidate Michelle Nunn’s campaign, the registration of tens of thousands of potential voters and a GOP primary race to the right that debilitates the eventual nominee.

Operatives from both parties agree Georgia is headed for swing-state status, as suburban Atlanta continues to sprawl. They estimate that, as soon as 2016, the state will get the kind of attention from presidential contenders that Virginia’s new purple-state status invited in 2008.

The Peach State was considered safe Republican territory in 2012, when Obama’s team declined to invest any advertising or field efforts like those seen in swing states. Still, Obama won nearly 46 percent of the vote.

Blacks now make up 31 percent of Georgia’s population and about 30 percent of its active voters, according to the U.S. Census Bureau and the Georgia Secretary of State’s office. Hispanics now account for 9 percent of the population but remain underrepresented in the voter rolls at just 2 percent. Similar demographic trends are also occurring in states such as Texas and Arizona.

The lingering question is: How soon can Democrats use their demographic advantages to consistently compete in federal elections in these states? Some national Democratic strategists believe that their first, best shot is in Georgia.

Johnson listed five specific necessities for Nunn to win and show her state as competitive:

• Full engagement from the political operation of Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, the most popular Democrat in the state.

• A coordinated voter registration operation that targets African-Americans, Hispanics and young, white progressive voters.

• Significant assistance from national Democratic organizations, including the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

• A coalition of voters based on the 1998 road map drawn by Michael Thurmond, Thurbert Baker and Roy Barnes-- Democrats who all won statewide.

• Avoiding a costly primary.

Democrats’ chances increased in January, when Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss announced his retirement. As their top chance to pick up a seat, there is a strong probability DSCC officials will spend significant money to win it.

But the timing isn’t perfect. Even though Georgia is headed toward becoming a routine battleground, midterm electorates are generally older and whiter-- which favors Republicans.

“I think a Democrat winning in Georgia right now for this seat is at best slim to none, and leaning toward none,” said Tom Perdue, a longtime consultant to Chambliss. “And not her name-- I mean N-O-N-E.”

Polling, however, shows Nunn decisively beating at least one of the top GOP choices: former Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel. She ties Rep. Phil Gingrey if he;s the nominee and is within the margin or error if John Birch Society extremist Paul Broun is the GOP nominee. And she hasn't even announced whether or not she'll run yet, although the DSCC has been telling insiders she is definitely running and that she'll announce later this month-- and so is EMILY's List.

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Which Georgia Extremist Will Out-Extreme All The Others?

Republican voters seem more and more insane lately-- like in the last decade. No one believes in all the trumped up "scandals" Republican congressional obstructionists are pushing out to a media desperate for fireworks except GOP voters. And in the Old Confederate states, the Republican base is far crazier than the representatives they elect (except for a few like Louie Gohmert, Paul Broun, Phil Gingrey and domestic terrorist suspect Steve Stockman). And speaking of Paul Broun and Phil Gingrey...

Those two crackpots are among a gaggle of crackpots running for the Republican nomination for the open Georgia Senate seat. They're all running to the extreme right-wing fringes, the lunatics who vote in the Republican primaries. And their antics are turning off mainstream voters and independents. The latest polling in Georgia shows the main candidates bunched up together and "undecided" (which can also be interpreted as "none of the above") way ahead.

• Jack Kingston- 17.61%
• Phil Gingrey- 15.98%
• Karen Handel- 15.81%
• Paul Broun- 14.14%
• David Perdue- 5.77%
• Undecided- 30.69%

And the more radical and extreme the candidate the GOP primary comes up with, the more likely Sam Nunn's daughter, Michelle Nunn, will snatch the seat from the Republicans. Nunn is competitive polling wise, and would beat former Secretary of State Karen Handel hands down. But is she going to run? Sunday she was the big buzz-- along with Obama-- at an Atlanta DSCC fundraiser. Michael Bennet (D-CO), chair of the DSCC said "We believe Georgia presents us with the greatest opportunity for a pickup." And, needless to say, all the Republican crackpots have, for example, come out against the bipartisan immigration reform bill. They know well who the Know Nothing primary voters are.

"We absolutely must deal with it but we don't need any new laws," Broun said. "The solution is to secure the borders, both north and south."

"We absolutely are going to be opposed and stand strong against any amnesty," Gingrey said. "My idea about solving this problem is to enforce the laws that are currently on the books."

Gingrey and Handel both said the current proposal was too similar to a 2007 immigration bill that ultimately failed.

"We are about to have deja vu all over again," Handel said. "Only in Washington could the same failed policies be put forward as 'reform.' We need to secure the borders now before we do anything else."

Kingston also called for the end of automatic citizenship for those born in the United States. "When you come to America as a visitor and if you have a child, that child should not automatically be an American citizen," Kingston said. "We are one of the few nations left that still have that relic on the books. It was needed at one time but it is not needed anymore."

The Governor asked them not to behave like the Hatfields and the McCoys and destroy each other's chances. Broun, a former drug addict and a current John Bircher, is probably the most extremist of the candidates, though not by much. When he first entered the race, he claimed he was the "only" conservative running and that the others are, essentially, poseurs. "I believe in the original intent of the Constitution," he clucked. "There’s no other candidate that’s going to get into this race that does. I believe in the Constitution as the Founding Fathers meant it. They believe in a Constitution where government finds all the solutions for all the problems. So there are big differences between me and all the other candidates that can get in this race."

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Can The Democrats Take A Senate Seat In Georgia? With Barrow Out, It's A Real Possibility

If you thought the Dems got lucky with Akin & Mourdock, wait 'til you meet Paul Broun

Teabaggers decided right-wing senator Saxby Chambliss wasn't pure enough-- after all, with a 1.95 lifetime ProgressivePunch score (and a ZERO for 2013), look how much more conservative he could be voting-- so they threatened him with a primary and he decided to retire. That leaves a Senate seat in a very Republican state up for grabs. Chambliss won in 2008 with 57.5% and in November Romney beat Obama 53-46%. Very Republican-- but not very, very Republican. Chambliss probably wouldn't have had to break a sweat to win reelection. But the teabaggers screwed that up for the RNSC. So now they have two declared candidates, two of the most certifiably insane extremists in Congress-- Paul Straight-From-The-Pit-Of-Hell Broun and Phil Akin-Was-Right Gingrey-- another lunatic (anti-Choice sociopath Karen Handel) threatening to jump in, a more respected right-winger (Tom Price) pulling out and Rove's handpicked Establishment candidate, Steve Kingston, under fore by the extremists for not being conservative enough for the party base. Broun had Kingston in his sites when he said the other Republicans running don't believe in the Constitution, "I believe in the original intent of the Constitution. There’s no other candidate that’s going to get into this race that does. I believe in the Constitution as the Founding Fathers meant it. They believe in a Constitution where government finds all the solutions for all the problems. So there are big differences between me and all the other candidates that can get in this race."

I wish there was more of a difference. But the 4 of them are all crackpots-- and that creates an opening for the Democrats, particularly a Democrat with a respected and beloved name in the state: Nunn. The Republicans, who were dying for weak, pusillanimous Blue Dog shill John Barrow to run, are petrified that Sam Nunn's daughter, Michelle Nunn, will run instead. (The Wall Street Journal announced Barrow's decision to not run as good news for Georgia Democrats.) The DSCC tested candidates against the least extremist of the 4 GOP extremists, Jack Kingston, and they found that Michelle Nunn would have the best chance to win the seat.

The March poll of 800 respondents found Kingston leading Nunn 33 percent to 32 percent, while Kingston led Barrow 33-29.

Barrow announced Tuesday that he would not run for Senate after months of flirting with the idea, and indications are that Nunn's refusal to step aside in a primary was a major reason for his decision. Democrats are now trying to spin Nunn as the superior candidate who can better turn out the base, while Republicans are crowing about how the battle-tested Barrow turned down the DSCC and dampened Democrats' dreams of taking over the seat after the retirement of Republican Saxby Chambliss.

...Nunn, daughter of the former senator Sam Nunn, is the CEO of the volunteer service organization Points of Light. She has not run for office before and is mostly a blank slate to Georgia voters, according to the DSCC poll. She was viewed favorably by 14 percent of respondents and unfavorably by 5 percent. Barrow stood at 18-10 favorable/unfavorable, identical to Kingston and the latest sign of how little-known these members of Congress are outside their districts.

After unspecified "positive and negative messaging" about the candidates was read to the respondents, Nunn pulled ahead of Kingston 37 percent to 34 percent, while Kingston led Barrow 33-32. The AJC was not provided any additional information about the poll, such as how the Democrats performed against the other Republicans in the race.

POLLING UPDATE

On Monday Better Georgia released a poll showing the GOP extremists make the open Senate seat very mich up for grabs. Michelle Nunn would beat Handel substantially and is in position to beat any of the crackpot congressmen the Republicans are looking at.

The survey shows a Republican advantage of 4 percentage points before either party has chosen its candidate. It also shows that in a crowded primary, Republican voters favor the most conservative candidate, Congressman Paul Broun.

Michelle Nunn, the founder and CEO of an international non-profit and the daughter of former United States Senator Sam Nunn, performs best when compared with potential GOP candidate Karen Handel, former Georgia Secretary of State. In a head-to-head match-up of the two women, Nunn draws 47 percent to Handel’s 39 percent. Nunn is tied with Congressman Phil Gingrey at 46 percent for each candidate. The most moderate Republican candidate, Congressman Jack Kingston, performs best against Nunn, 48 percent to 42 percent. None of the Republican candidates top the 50 percent mark when tested against Nunn.

“Georgia voters are growing increasingly tired of status quo conservatives who put ideology before common sense solutions to Georgia’s biggest challenges,” said Better Georgia Executive Director Bryan Long.  “Georgia is simply not a ‘red state’ where the most conservative candidate is assured victory. Anyone who believes otherwise simply has not looked at the data.”

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