Georgia's Very Own Megathread!

[Bacon King]

Laurens/Johnson was DuBose's House district, y'know

[Bacon King]

Hahaha, the crosstabs of that poll are pretty ridiculous. 53% of the state lives in the Atlanta metro, including the counties with the most Republican votes in the state. There's no way that 70% of the GOP primary electorate lives outside the metro.

[Bacon King]

The Barr campaign team:

• Barr's general consultant hates the Tea Party and has worked for the DCCC.
• The chief strategist was in charge of Oxendine's 2010 campaign (for non-Georgians, Oxendine was the guy who went from unstoppable frontrunner to 4th place finisher in about a month).
• The pollster did the internals for the Gingrich 2012 campaign (who thought Nevada was neck-and-neck, among other silly things).
• The ad-man is the guy who created hits such as "Demon Sheep," "I'm not a witch," "Chinese lady thanks Debbie Spenditnow," "Ben Quayle wants to knock the hell out of things," and "Jon Huntsman rides a dirtbike through the desert for a really long time".

There is no way this campaign ends up with some sort of hilarious implosion!

[Bacon King]

 PERDUE SET TO ENTER US SENATE RACE  








Nah, not Sonny. His cousin David.

[Bacon King]

Broun, Gingrey, Handel, and Kingston. David Perdue will probably enter the race at some point. Is there anyone else who has made any noise at all about a possible run? I know none of the statewide officeholders have expressed any interest, but have any of them given a non-denial?

[Bacon King]

YES YES LEE ANDERSON AGAIN

[Bacon King]

Oh hey, getting banner ads at the top of the page for David Perdue!

[Bacon King]

At this rate, the DPG is on track to be completely broke by the end of the summer:

http://www.ajc.com/weblogs/political-insider/2013/jun/27/georgia-democratic-party-only-has-15000-bank/

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Terrible but I doubt we'll go bankrupt like Alabama did- the only reason that happened was horrible infighting between the old guard, the teacher's "union", and the black caucus, what with deposing leaders left and right.

If nothing else, I figure enough exec board members will pony up enough cash to keep things (barely) functional.

[Bacon King]

On facebook:
Paul Broun has 40000 "like"
Jack Kingston: 6000
Karen Handel: 8250
Phil Gingrey: 23500

So, good news? Broun seems to be successfull with the base!

Paul Broun has notoriety out-of-state, though. Gingrey doesn't, however, and considering he's almost as crazy I'll gladly take him as the opponent

Well you trended 2 more points to the left and were about 11 points right of center. With all things being equal, Georgia would be about 56-44. I'd say you're about as close as Indiana, Arizona, and South Carolina. You have a ways to go and Obama being black helped him in the peach state tremendously. You know I love how liberals say "it's just a few elections away" when it comes to southern states and Arizona. Actually, both parties are guilty of wishful thinking, but the Democrats do it worse. I see my party do it with New Jersey but unless some of the liberals migrate back to NY, it will remain a purplish blue.

As much as Obama helped among black voters he hurt among white voters. Hilldawg could win GA in 2016.

[Bacon King]

PublicPolicyPolling ‏@ppppolls 12 h
Sam Nunn has a 56/12 favorability rating in Georgia

Not surprising.

I guess the olds in that poll will see him strongly favorable, while the youngs have not much clue who he is (many undecided).

PPP's crosstabs on this are very weird:

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The two age groups 18-29 and 30-45 make no sense.

It makes sense. There's a huge drop in name recognition in the 30 to 45 group (the 75% undecided and all) because Sam Nunn's last election was 1990. Anyone who is younger than 41 has never even seen Nunn's name on a ballot, while anyone old enough to have ever voted for him will certainly remember him for his quarter-century in the Senate.

The contrasting result for the youngest demographic is probably just noise from the low sample size (only 11% of respondents were in this age group). Maybe also just recognizing him for the things named after him too?

[Bacon King]

I posted this in a poll thread, but I made a long off-topic segue into my observations regarding the attitude of rural voters towards the Democratic Party. I figured I'd post it here in the Megathread if anyone would like to read it

I'd argue Handel lacks name rec, but Nunn doesn't have name rec either. At least, not for her first name.

I would bet actual money that Handel has the highest name recognition, by far, out of the entire field. She was very visible in the 2010 gubernatorial campaign, and before that she was a very prominent figure in Atlanta/Fulton politics (she was the Chairman of the Fulton County Board of Commissioners, representing a population about a third larger than a Congressional district). She's also the only candidate who's held statewide office. The only candidate who would even come close is Broun and that's just because he makes the news so often whenever he sticks his foot in his mouth.

And yes, Nunn has no name recognition herself, but that family name will carry her far. I talk politics with my family in rural south Georgia because they're a good barometer for for the area's opinions (I confidently predicted Barrow's reelection last year because of their attitude towards him, for example). Talking with these relatives a couple of weeks ago, they were very receptive - even enthusiastic - about the idea of voting for "Sam Nunn's kid," in a way they'd never be about any other statewide Democratic candidate these days.

These are the sort of former blue dog Dixiecrat voters who switched parties when, from their perspective, the Democratic party stopped caring about people like them. They basically all agree with that one Zell Miller line, "I didn't leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left me," except their opinion of Zell himself isn't necessarily very positive (they remember him for his habitual flip-flopping triangulation that gave him the title "Zig-Zag Zell" and saw his 2004 persona as just another switch). But they still think of themselves as Democrats, in spirit if not in name.

On the local level, most elections in the area are decided in the Democratic Primary. I could point out plenty of 70% Romney counties that have never once elected a Republican to any county office. These rural voters are totally fine voting for a Democrat- they just have to be the right kind of Democrat. They hear the name "Nunn" and they remember Sam Nunn, who in their eyes was definitely the right kind of Democrat, the kind of politician that really stood up for people like them. Sure, they don't know Michelle Nunn- but they know her daddy, and that's enough to know she's good people.

[Bacon King]

Is your family really conservative?
A Nunn victory would be great, Georgia is trending dem so she would be in a better environment 6 years later.

The relatives I refer to are very conservative, yes, but they're not outspoken ideologues or anything. For example, I recall one of my uncles expressing distaste for Paul Broun after he controversially remarked that evolution and the big bang were "lies straight from the pit of hell." He actually completely agreed with what Broun said, but he thought Broun was pandering and "just trying to get people riled up" since, in his view, there's no genuine reason for a politician to address such an obvious truth as if it were something controversial. They're thoughtful people, but the culture down there is very different, leading to a very foreign worldview for me (and probably most of the forum).

[Bacon King]

The head of the Georgia public school system, ladies and gentlemen:

[Bacon King]

Honestly though, I really doubt Barge makes much of a dent in the race. He has no political connections, the GOP establishment doesn't care for him, he's shown no evidence of any substantial fundraising capacity (in 2010 his Democratic opponent outraised him 3 to 1) and he doesn't have the wealth to be a self-funder.

Keep in mind he only won the GOP Superintendent primary in 2010 because Kathy Cox, the incumbent and presumptive nominee, unexpectedly announced her resignation six days before the qualification deadline. The primary was then between two random high school assistant principals and John Barge beat the other guy 51%-49%.




In other news, I've been hearing speculation that Jim Marshal might run for Governor! Anyone have info on that?

[Bacon King]

This is completely unrelated to anything any previous post might have said but here's this great poll about ice cream I just found, it certainly isn't from behind a paywall because posting that here would possibly be illegal

Question 1: “Do you think it should be legal or illegal for ice cream to be legal in Georgia?”
Legal: 48% (strongly 30%, somewhat 17%)
Illegal: 43% (strongly 38%, somewhat 5%)
Don’t know/No answer: 9%

Question 2: “Has your opinion toward ice cream changed over the past few years, or not?”
Yes, has changed: 16%
No, stayed the same: 83%
Don’t know/No answer: 1%

59% of six-figure income earners like ice cream (a quarter of them having decided so in the last two years), two-thirds of adults under 40 like ice cream while olds hate it by a similar margin

[Bacon King]

I'm skeptical about Carter but very optimistic about Nunn. I suppose it's possible some synergy between their campaigns could help Carter a lot, though.

[Bacon King]

So this is fun. If Carter runs:

the Democratic nominees for governor and senator will both be grandchildren of the men who held those respective offices exactly fourty years prior.

[Bacon King]

Derp, right, her father and his grandfather.

[Bacon King]

I agree Kingston is a stronger candidate than Handel. It's worth noting that precinct-level results suggest that Kingston regularly polls 30% or more among blacks. Caveat, of course, that this probably won't be indicative of much of anything, but still.

[Bacon King]

Guys if Deal gets arrested what do you think would happen?

BK, what does your family think about Jason Carter?

Not sure, but I'll ask at Thanksgiving

[Bacon King]

Guys if Deal gets arrested what do you think would happen?

BK, what does your family think about Jason Carter?

Not sure, but I'll ask at Thanksgiving

I wasn't aware that a resignation was a possibility. What is it exactly that he's being accused of?

I'm not 100 Percent on the details, but my understanding is that:

The FBI has been questioning whistleblowing employees of the ethics commission who were fired by the new ethics commission chairman for leaking that the old ethics commission chairman got pressured to resign because she wasn't willing to let Deal off the hook for his campaign finance violations (the replacement he appointed let him get off with a "technical fine" of a like three thousand dollars).

[Bacon King]

County GOP Straw Poll Results, Senate Primary

Oglethorpe County (October 11)
Paul Broun (36%)
Jack Kingston (36%)
Karen Handel (21%)
Undecided (6%)
Phil Gingrey, Derrick Grayson, David Perdue, & Eugene Yu (0%)

Gwinnett County (September 25)
39% Karen Handel
26% Paul Broun
11% Phil Gingrey
10% Jack Kingston
9% Undecided
5% Derrick Grayson
0% Eugene Yu

Barrow County (August 24th)
Jack Kingston – 69 (28.75%)
Paul Broun – 67 (27.92%)
Karen Handel – 33 (13.75%)
Eugene Yu – 16 (6.67%)
David Perdue – 11 (4.58%)
Phil Gingrey – 8 (3.33%)
Derrick Grayson – 2 (0.83%)
Ken Young – 1 (0.42%)
Undecided – 33 (13.75%)

Floyd County (August 17th)
Gingrey-45 (34.4%)
Handel- 35 (26.7%)
Broun- 24 (18.3%)
Kingston- 18 (13.7%)
Perdue- 7 (5.3%)
Grayson- 2 (1.5%)
Yu -0 (0%)

Fulton County (June 9th)
Handel 42%
Broun 29%
Kingston 23%

State GOP Convention (May 20th)
Karen Handel, 42 votes;
Jack Kingston, 21 votes;
Paul Broun, 14 votes;
Phil Gingrey, 9 votes;
David Perdue, 3 votes.

[Bacon King]

That cross-section, to me, does seem to bode well for Kingston... Not so much for Gingrey.

[Bacon King]

posted without comment

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/10/26/georgia-man-runs-into-burning-home-to-get-beer

[Bacon King]

Is Carter giving up his state senate seat or is he just not running for reelection? You can't run for two offices at once, right?