Michelle Nunn means Georgia Republicans need to think long and hard about their Senate nominee

Michelle Nunn just raised the stakes in Georgia’s Senate Republican primary.

In announcing a Senate campaign that had been expected for weeks, the Democrat with a well-known last name gave her party a credible contender who could make the general election interesting if Republicans botch a race that tilts in their favor right now.

Nunn is the latest entrant into a complex national battle for control of the Senate. Republicans are expected to have to net six seats in 2014 to win back the majority. Georgia and Kentucky represent the only two realistic pickup opportunities for Democrats at this point, though both contests look like pretty tall orders for the party. But if they can steal away even one, it will make life awfully difficult for Senate Republicans.

And that’s where Nunn, 46, comes in. The head of a nonprofit group that encourages volunteerism, she is the daughter of former senator Sam Nunn, a centrist Democrat who represented the Peach State in the upper chamber for nearly a quarter century. The younger Nunn is a political newcomer who faces trial by fire: Trying to win a Senate race in a state Republicans have dominated in recent years.

via Michelle Nunn means Georgia Republicans need to think long and hard about their Senate nominee.