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Ten things to watch for in Tuesday’s election
U.S. Senate, U.S. House and governorships are on the ballot all across the South
By Rich Shumate, Chickenfriedpolitics.com editor
(CFP) — As voters go to the polls on Tuesday, here are 10 things to watch for in races across the South:
W
ill There Be A Peach State Runoff? — Georgia has a unique election law providing for a general election runoff if neither candidate gets an outright majority — a distinct possibility in a close race with a third-party candidate. Polls show that both the U.S. Senate race between Republican David Perdue and Democrat Michelle Nunn and the governor’s race between incumbent GOP Governor Nathan Deal and Democratic State Senator Jason Carter could be razor close. If that happens, a runoff in the governor’s race would be December 9, but the Senate race would not be settled until January 6.
U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu
Is Battle For Senate Control Headed To The Bayou? — Regardless what happens in Georgia, the in Louisiana between incumbent Democratic U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu and her GOP opponent, U.S. Rep. Bill Cassidy, is certain to head to a runoff. If Republicans need the Louisiana seat to gain control of the Senate, the Pelican State could become the focus of the American political world until the December 6 runoff.
How Much Of A Drag Is Obama? — The president’s approval ratings are anemic across the South, and none of the major Democratic candidates have brought him into the region to campaign. Linking each and every Democrat to Obama (and Obamacare) has been part and parcel of just about every Republican campaign. Tuesday will determine whether Obama’s unpopularity was a millstone that drowned Democratic prospects.
Will Florida Voters Resurrect Crist? — Charlie Crist’s political career looked to be all but over after a disastrous run for the U.S. Senate four years ago. But now he’s back — this time as a Democrat — and, if the polls are to be believed, within striking distance of the governor’s mansion once again. If Crist pulls it off, it will be a remarkable feat of political redemption.
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott
How Big Will Abbott Win? — There’s no question that Republican Greg Abbott will win the governor’s race in Texas over Democratic State Senator Wendy Davis, who ran a remarkably inept campaign. The only question is how badly Davis goes down. Democrats talked a good game earlier this year about turning Texas blue. Tuesday’s results could show how distant that dream really is.
Fallin And Haley On National Stage? — Both Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin and South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley are cruising to easy re-election wins, which could catapult them into the national conversation for 2016. Historically, being a governor has been the best way to become president, and perhaps one reason we haven’t had a female president is that no female governor has ever sought the White House. Tuesday’s results could start those kinds of conversations in Columbia and Oklahoma City.
Are Nunn And Graham Their Father’s Political Daughters? — Both Nunn, running for the U.S. Senate in Georgia, and Gwen Graham, who is seeking a U.S. House seat in Florida, are scions of prominent Democratic political families making their political debuts. Both have run strong campaigns in areas that lean Republican. So Tuesday could be a night of political deja vu.
How Many Southern Senate Seats Can Democrats Keep? — Right now, the Democrats have only eight out of 28 seats. They seem certain to lose one of those, in West Virginia, and three others — Arkansas, Louisiana and North Carolina — are in jeopardy. So the party of Jackson that once strode strong across the South could be reduced to having less than 15 percent of region’s Senate seats.
Has Georgia Turned Purple? — If Democrats pull off wins in the U.S. Senate and governor’s races in Georgia, they will no doubt crow about changing political winds in the Peach State. Tuesday’s results will show if Georgia, like Virginia before it, is becoming less reliably Republican, which would no doubt encourage Democrats to try to put the state into play in 2016.
Can Rahall Survive in West Virginia? — When Democratic U.S. Rep. Nick Rahall was first elected to Congress, bellbottoms were still the rage. But after 38 years in Washington, he is fighting for his political life in a state where opposition to the Obama administration’s environmental policies is dragging down the Democratic brand. If Rahall goes, the state’s entire House delegation will be in GOP hands, a sea change in a state that a generation ago leaned Democratic.
Analysis: 2014 is a year of missed opportunity for Southern Democrats
Democrats across the region making little headway in overcoming Republican hegemony
♦By Rich Shumate, Chickenfriedpolitics.com editor
This year, 10 GOP-held U.S. Senate seats are up for election across the South. Democrats mounted serious challenges to just two of them.
This year, seven Republican-held Southern governorships are on the ballot. Democrats mounted serious challenges in just two of those races as well.
Heading into this election, Republicans hold 108 of the 151 U.S. House seats in the South. Democrats put just six of them in play and could very well come away without gaining a single seat, while at least four of their own seats are in serious jeopardy.
With the exception of Georgia, where Democrats are making surprisingly strong runs for both U.S. Senator and governor, 2014 has been a year of miscues and might-have-beens for the party of Jackson.
For example, at the beginning of the year, South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley had shaky job approval numbers and looked like she might be vulnerable. Now, she’s poised to roll to re-election on Tuesday, which could put her in the national conversation in 2016.
Down in Florida, Republican Governor Rick Scott’s rocky tenure in Tallahassee gave Democrats a golden opportunity, which they may have squandered by giving their nomination to the deeply flawed Charlie Crist.
A year ago in Texas, State Senator Wendy Davis was the darling of liberals everywhere, poised to lead Lone Star Democrats to the promised land after 20 years in the wilderness. Her inept campaign for governor has left those hopes in tatters, although it could be argued that a candidate best known for a full-throttled defense of abortion wasn’t that viable in a place like Texas to begin with.
In Florida earlier this year, Democrats failed to wrest the 13th District U.S. House seat — which Barack Obama carried twice — from Republicans during a special election, which left them with no chance to win it in the fall.
Florida 13 is one of three Republican-held House seats in the South that Obama carried in 2012. The GOP is poised to carry all three on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, there are five Democrat-held Southern House seats that Mitt Romney carried in 2012. Republicans are making strong runs in all five.
So moribund is the Democratic Party in Alabama that it didn’t even field a candidate to run against Republican U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions. And in both Oklahoma and South Carolina, where both Senate seats are up this year, Democrats couldn’t muster a serious challenge in any of those four races.
Senate seats are likely to flip from Democratic to Republican hands in both West Virginia and Arkansas, with Democrat-held seats in both North Carolina and Louisiana in jeopardy. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell appears to be beating back a Democratic challenge in Kentucky.
That leaves Georgia as the only bright spot for Democrats. Michelle Nunn has combined innate political talent with a strong campaign to make herself competitive in a state where Democrats haven’t won a Senate race since 1996.
However, if she can’t polish off David Perdue on Tuesday, the race will head to a January runoff — and runoffs can be nasty, brutish and unpredictable.
So here is the state of play, heading into Tuesday:
- Republicans hold 20 of the 28 Southern Senate seats. That number will almost certainly rise.
- Republicans hold 10 of 14 governorships. Given that the GOP will likely make a pick-up in Arkansas, the best Democrats can hope for is to go from four to five, if they take out incumbents in both Georgia and Florida — a tall order..
- The GOP holds 108 of the 151 House seats. Odds are the Republican margin will increase slightly.
All in all, Republican hegemony is alive and well across the Southland.
Clinton and Giuliani appear in ads for Florida candidates they once opposed
Clinton calls Democrat Charlie Crist “the people’s governor,” as Giuliani slams Crist in an ad for Republican Rick Scott
♦By Rich Shumate, Chickenfriedpolitics.com
MIAMI (CFP) — Just eight years after working to defeat Charlie Crist in the 2006 Florida governor’s race, former President Bill Clinton has cut a new television ad touting Crist as “the people’s governor.”
In the ad, which began airing statewide October 28, Clinton tells voters the Republican-turned-independent-turned-Democrat “really cares about making your life better.”
“I hope you’ll stand with Charlie. He needs your vote.”
Not to be outdone in the surrogate wars, the campaign of Crist’s opponent, Republican Governor Rick Scott, began airing a clip of a recent speech by former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani in which he slams the party-switching Crist.
“I’ve never met a person in politics that I disrespect more than Charlie Crist,” Giuliani said.
When Crist ran for governor in 2006 as a Republican, Clinton came to the Sunshine State to campaign for his opponent, former Democratic U.S. Rep. Jim Davis, while Giuliani campaigned for Crist.
In 2010, after Crist decided to forsake Tallahassee and run for the U.S. Senate as an independent, Giuliani supported one of Scott’s opponents, former Attorney General Bill McCollum, in the GOP primary.
With less than a week to go before the election, polls show the race between Scott and Crist is too close to call.
Watch the ads featuring Clinton and Giuliani:
Polls: Georgia’s races for U.S. Senate and governor appear headed for runoffs
None of the major candidates in either race is above the 50 percent threshold required for a win under the state’s unique election law
♦By Rich Shumate, Chickenfriedpolitics.com editor
ATLANTA (CFP) — Races for U.S. Senator and governor in Georgia appear heading for December runoffs, thanks to close races, support for third-party Libertarians and the Peach State’s unique requirement of general election runoffs if no candidate wins a majority on election day.
A runoff could leave control of the Senate hanging in the balance until January 6 if Georgia’s race is needed to decide the balance of power.
Democratic nominee Michelle Nunn
Recent polling in the Senate race between Democrat Michelle Nunn and Republican David Perdue shows both candidates neck-and-neck within the margin of error but short of 50 percent.
The Libertarian candidate Amanda Swafford, a lawyer and former city councilwoman in Flowery Branch, is polling between 3 and 6 percent – enough to cause a runoff if the battle between Perdue and Nunn is close.
Likewise, in the race for governor, the Republican incumbent, Governor Nathan Deal, and his Democratic challenger, State Senator Jason Carter, are within the margin of error but below 50 percent, with Libertarian Andrew Hunt, an Atlanta technology executive, polling at about 5 percent.
Governor Nathan Deal
Georgia is the only state in the union that has a general election runoff. The runoff for governor would be December 2, but the runoff for Senate would not happen until January 6.
Louisiana has a slightly different system in which candidates from all parties run in a primary in November, with a runoff set for December 6 if no candidate gets a majority.
The U.S. Senate race in Louisiana also appears to be heading for a runoff, with recent polls showing both incumbent U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu and her GOP challenger, U.S. Rep. Bill Cassidy, polling in the low to mid 40s.
In the Georgia Senate race, Nunn and Perdue, both political newcomers, are seeking the seat of retiring Republican U.S. Senator Saxby Chambliss. Nunn is the daughter of former U.S. Senator Sam Nunn, while Perdue is a cousin of former Governor Sonny Perdue.
In the governor’s race, Carter, the grandson of former President Jimmy Carter, has run a surprisingly strong campaign against Deal, who is seeking a second term as the state’s chief executive after serving more than 17 years in Congress.
Deal’s prospects for re-election may have been harmed by the state’s sluggish response to a January snowstorm that paralyzed metro Atlanta.
Debate between Crist and Scott in Florida starts off with nasty spat over a fan
Republican Gov. Rick Scott refuses to take the stage because of a fan placed under Crist’s podium
DAVIE, Florida (CFP) — A gubernatorial debate in Florida took a bizarre turn, when Republican Gov. Rick Scott initially refused to take the stage after a fan was placed under the podium of Democrat Charlie Crist, in apparent violation of the rules of the October 15 debate.
Florida Governor Rick Scott
Scott eventually relented and took the stage at Broward College, but not before Crist got into a contretemps with the debate moderator, Elliott Rodriguez, over whether the fan violated the rules.
“Are we really going to debate about a fan?” Crist said.
Asked later in the debate why he wanted to use a fan despite the rules, Crist said, “Why not?”
“Is there anything wrong with being comfortable? I don’t think there is.”
During the debate, Scott continued a line of attack that he has made throughout the campaign that during Crist’s tenure as governor between 2007 and 2011 — when Crist was a Republican — the state lost 832,000 jobs. Scott charged that Crist was so consumed by his ambition for higher office that he didn’t do enough to promote economic development.
“He didn’t want to do the job. He wanted to be vice president and then ran against Marco Rubio for the Senate,” Scott said. “Charlie is a lot of talk. But he’s not a lot of action.”
Former Florida Governor Charlie Crist
But Crist responded that he could not be held responsible for jobs lost during the Great Recession.
“The people of Florida know that I didn’t cause the global economic meltdown,” he said. “They are smarter than that.”
Crist also hit Scott for not pushing through the private option expansion of Medicaid that was part of Obamacare in Florida.
“People are hurting, and they are suffering,” he said, adding that “I don’t know why” Scott hasn’t pushed for Medicaid expansion.
But Scott responded that Crist was actually governor when Obamacare was passed.
“Did he go to the legislature to pass this because it’s a great idea? No,” Scott said, adding that “Obamacare is a bad law.”
To a chorus of boos from the audience, Crist also raised a line of attack that he has made throughout the campaign over fraud charges lodged against Scott’s former company, HCA, in 1997.
“The truth hurts sometimes,” Crist said. “You pled the Fifth 75 times.”
Scott was never charged in connection with the HCA fraud, although the company paid a $600 million fine. The same issue was unsuccessfully raised against Scott in 2010 when he was first elected governor.
Scott was also pressed on whether he thought Florida’s constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, passed by voters in 2008, was discriminatory.
“While I believe in traditional marriage, we have to understand people have different views,” Scott said, noting that the ban is currently being challenged in court.
Pressed further if he thought the ban was discriminatory, Scott said only, “I don’t believe in discrimination.”
Crist came back swinging, saying he supported same-sex marriage, even though in 2008, when he was a Republican governor, he supported that amendment. Scott then pounced on Crist’s inconsistency.
“We don’t know what Charlie believes on this issue because he’s taken every side on this issue,” Scott said.
Polls have shown the race for governor in the Sunshine State is too close to call.
Crist was elected governor as a conservative Republican in 2006. In 2010, he gave up the governorship to pursue a U.S. Senate seat, first as a Republican and then as an independent. He became a Democrat in 2012.
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