Analysis: Ga. Senate candidate has fences to mend | savannahnow.com

ATLANTA — The apparently accidental leak of a 144-page strategy memo from consultants to Michelle Nunn is causing heartburn among some of her natural allies.

Nunn might not need much help in undermining the support she would normally expect from dependable Democratic-leaning groups.

For instance, blacks vote overwhelmingly for Democrats, but her dismissal of two blacks running against her in the Democratic primary left many African-American leaders miffed. Plus, she put off a lot of party regulars in the primary with her campaign’s tactic of skipping functions organized by Democratic auxiliary groups in favor of events manufactured by her staff and even ducking debates organized by non-partisan civic groups. They all began to feel a little insulted, like she didn’t want to be seen with them.

She also brushed off some of Georgia’s targeted media, such as Atlanta Progressive News by being the only Democrat in the Senate primary refusing to participate in a sit-down interview.

“After all, APN’s questions for Nunn were issue-driven and policy-driven, and the last thing Nunn would want to do is to take positions unless they were right-wing ones (for example, on same-sex marriage, the proposed Keystone Pipeline, the Voting Rights Act, the once-proposed U.S. Invasion of Syria, or the proposed nuclear fuel reprocessing plant),” notes the online publication’s staff writer Barbara Payne.

Then Payne added that reporters always suspect that campaigns “use a strategy of vagueness to get elected. However, to see it in memo form is validating.”

If Nunn fails to energize her base, it’s not only a blow to her election but also bad news to down-ballot Democrats needing a ride on her coattails. As her memo states, with an expected 52 percent turnout in November, she is aiming to get 1.4 million votes, more than any other Democrat has ever garnered here in a non-presidential year like this one.

The Nunn camp plans to operate sophisticated targeting to send different messages to each segment of the electorate in order to drive up turnout. Many in this audience won’t ever pay attention to political coverage in the general media and will get information about the race from ethnic media, social media or direct mail.