Georgia Politics, Campaigns, and Elections for August 1, 2014

August 1 was a big day for Benjamin Mays – he was born on August 1, 1895 and became President of Morehouse College on August 1, 1936.

PT-109, commanded by LTJG John F. Kennedy was sunk on August 1, 1943.

On August 1, 1982, Hank Aaron was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Richard Woods GAGOP Candidate for State School Super

Secretary of State Brian Kemp announced the results of the statewide recount and Richard Woods beat Mike Buck by somewhere in the neighborhood of 700 votes. (AJC reports 712 votes; Rome News-Tribune reports exactly 700 votes, as does the Gainesville Times; WTOC reports “less than 700 votes”; that’s why we don’t have reporters do recounts). Actually, the official news release from Kemp said the difference was exactly 700 votes, so how did everyone else get it wrong?

Here’s an interesting fact if you’ve ever wondered about how long it takes to do a recount from the Newnan Times-Herald:

Jane Scoggins, superintendent of elections for Coweta County, performed the local recount on Wednesday. It took her approximately four-and-a-half hours to count all the paper ballots and to upload every OS card to the database.

Presumably other counties take more or less time, but it’s the first time I remember seeing an actual figure since the switch to video poker electronic voting machines.

ICYMI: Michelle Nunn’s position on Israel

Like maybe if you’re a politics reporter for the state’s largest daily newspaper and you inexplicably just started your GaPundit.com subscription last night, you really should check out our recent story, “Michelle Nunn’s leaked campaign plan in photos.”

Because how else would you know that Michelle Nunn’s first change when she became a candidate and got a “Georgia style makeover” was that her image consultant told her to ditch the lime green shirts and black pantsuits in favor of wearing UGA colors and skirts all the time?

Two analyses of the Nunn Campaign Plan

The Washington Post column The Fix parses the numbers in the Senate race, according to the Nunn campaign plan. If you’re quantitatively-inclined, it’s a good read.

The document starts, as all campaigns start and all campaign plans should start, with the numbers.

The memo assumes 52 percent turnout in November. Applying the 52 percent to that 5.3 million number gives you a total voter pool of about 2.75 million. To win, a candidate in a two-person race needs 1.38 million votes. So the Nunn camp set her target at 1.4 million, to provide a cushion. That’s more than most Democrats not named Obama have gotten in the state; usually, the memo says, Democrats get about 1.2 million votes “with strong campaigns.”

Next, the memo outlines where those 1.4 million votes will come from. One key argument is that the campaign hopes to “discourag[e] the kind of Republican surge we saw in 2010,” to keep the vote total at about 2.7 million.

Literally everything else in the document is about making this plan come true. It’s pages and pages of identifying constituency groups and figuring out who good surrogates will be and so on — but it all flows from the campaign’s expectation of who’s actually going to come to the polls.

The Wall Street Journal asks whether Michelle Nunn’s campaign has anything to do with Georgia voters, and with good reason. It sounds like she only know a very narrow swath of them, the ones who are members of identifiable liberal interest groups.

So Ms. Nunn was still developing her positions on key issues during the early stages of the campaign, which would not be uncommon, especially for first-time candidates. But if policy was not her passion, perhaps she enjoyed deep relationships across the state of Georgia and a unique understanding of its people.

On that score, a section on community outreach is revealing. The document lists names of people expected to volunteer to serve as campaign surrogates and to recruit supporters among various constituent groups. The memo contains 18 names of student leaders on Georgia’s various college campuses and 19 people expected to help spread her message in the LGBT community.

What about senior citizens and religious leaders? “TBD.” Also to be determined were volunteers among small-business owners, farmers, gun owners, and even among the usual liberal constituencies of education and labor.

Yet the Nunn campaign had no trouble coming up with names of potential supporters among the CEOs of multinational corporations.

Nunn fights back

Michelle Nunn finally on day four reacted to the leakage of her campaign memo with what would have been a great answer four days earlier.

“I always thought I wanted to run an open and transparent campaign but this has gone beyond what I anticipated or intended,” she said during a stop in Macon.

She compared the memos to counsel she receives from supporters and strategists – rather than a campaign blueprint. She wouldn’t say specifically what advice she’s taken and what she abandoned, but said there was nothing in the memo she wanted to clarify.

“First of all, the set of memos were a set of advice that I was getting from a variety of folks. I’m getting advice every day from everybody parents to friends to my children.”

That would have been a great response on day one, but now it’s too little, too late.

When you first start Fight Club boxing or playing rugby, you learn pretty quickly what a jab to the nose feels like. Sure, it’s painful, but the first time it happens to you, it’s also shocking, it makes your eyes and nose run and prevents you from thinking clearly for just long enough for your opponent to unleash a flurry of body shots.

That’s what you saw from the Nunn campaign: they were staggered by the first shot they took to the nose, and ironically, it was self-inflicted. That’s why candidates are better after they’ve been through a primary election: they know how to take a punch and keep going, an they know that the aim is to hit the other fighter, not their own nose.

Compare the David Perdue who shows up to the Saturday kick-off tour this weekend to the one we first saw when he came out of his corner. He’s focused, on message, and tightly-controlled. Like a fighter who’s been training and is ready to go twelve rounds.

Newsbites: from around Georgia

Ebola comes to Atlanta – WABE.

The CDC says an outbreak in the United States is very unlikely – US News & World Report.

Remember a couple weeks ago the stories about problems with CDC’s infectious disease labs? – USA Today.

The ACLU says that Georgia’s going to far in enforcing immigration standards, but Phil Kent says enforcement under Georgia HB 87 is doing just fine. – WABE.

Georgia is the seventh-most patriotic state in America. Probably moves up if you exclude Metro Atlanta. – Movoto.com.

The 2014 Georgia Democratic State Convention will be held on August 9th in Dublin at the DuBose Porter Regional Business and Industry Center, named after the current Chair of the DPG. – Macon Telegraph.

In preparation for SkyNet, the military is doing exercises at Fort Stewart involving drones and fighter jets – Savannah Morning News.

Augusta homeowners can sound off on the recent vote to raise property taxes by 1.75 mills at three public meetings being held after the vote – Augusta Chronicle.

Forbes ranked Berry College number 89 among liberal arts colleges in the South – Rome News-Tribune.

Spending a bundle of your own money doesn’t often work out well for political candidates – Washington Post.

The New York Times will now include internet polling in political races – Washington Post.

Demographic changes that favor Democrats are moving more slowly in Georgia than some would like – Washington Post.

Earlier this week, our colleagues over at Monkey Cage made a prediction that Georgia wasn’t going to turn blue in the near future. To demonstrate this point, they looked at a very specific bit of data: The relationship between how strongly the state supported Republican candidates versus how strongly the rest of the country did. That margin wasn’t getting much narrower, suggesting that the state was remaining pretty red.

See how Virginia has slowly moved back toward Democratic candidates over the last few presidential elections? Well, Georgia hasn’t.

Georgia remains to the right of the rest of the country, and isn’t moving very much toward the center.

Sen. Judson Hill wins ALEC award

Sen. Judson Hill Awarded Legislator of the Year by the American Legislative Exchange Council

Dallas, Texas (July 31, 2014) — Senator Judson Hill of Georgia received the Legislator of the Year Award today from the American Legislative Exchange Council at the organization’s 41st Annual Meeting in Dallas, Texas. Sen. Hill received the award for his dedication to ALEC principles and work supporting the ALEC Georgia delegation.

“Being a member of ALEC has given me the opportunity to advance the principles of limited government, free markets and federalism in Georgia and around the country,” said Sen. Hill. “I am honored to be recognized by ALEC and look forward to continuing the exchange of good ideas.”

Sen. Hill was first elected to the Georgia Senate in 2004. He has served in several legislative delegations and senate committees including the Senate Finance Committee, the Insurance and Labor Committee and Health and Human Services Committee. In addition to serving as the ALEC Georgia public sector co-chair, Sen. Hill is the public sector chair of the ALEC Task Force on Health and Human Services.

“Senator Hill has been a driving force in advancing free market principles in Georgia,” said Iowa Majority Leader Linda Upmeyer, ALEC National Chair. “We are pleased to honor his tireless efforts with this award.”

The American Legislative Exchange Council is the country’s largest 501(c)(3) nonpartisan voluntary membership organization of state legislators. The organization fosters relationships between private and public sector members from around the country to develop best practice solutions to various state issues.

Each year, state legislators are recognized at the ALEC Annual Meeting for their leadership within the organization and their work promoting the Jeffersonian principles of limited government, free markets and federalism. To learn more about the American Legislative Exchange Council and to find information on the 41st Annual Meeting, visit www.alec.org.

Event Calendar

Fayette County GOP Breakfast – Michael McNeely – GAGOP 1st Vice-Chair

Brazilian American Chamber of Commerce Annual Meeting