The day after the election, Republicans across the country
breathed a sigh of relief. Yes, the Democrats had won the
presidency and increased their majorities in both houses of
Congress. But it initially looked like the Democrats were going
to fall short of their goal of a 60-seat, filibuster-proof Senate
majority.
Not only did the Democrats fail to take out Republican senators
in Kentucky and Mississippi, but a few other troubled GOP
incumbents seemed like they might hang on. Gordon Smith was
leading in Oregon. Norm Coleman of Minnesota and even the
felonious Ted Stevens of Alaska appeared to have won reelection.
Saxby Chambliss was poised to avoid a runoff in Georgia. It was
as if swing voters saw the early returns and decided to put a
brake on the Democrats. Joe Lieberman was reportedly in talks
about caucusing with Senate Republicans if Harry Reid’s minions
took away his committee chairmanship.
Since then, the tide has again turned. When all the votes were
counted, Smith lost (a Constitution Party candidate played the
spoiler). Stevens lost. Lieberman kept his committee chairmanship
and stayed in the Democratic caucus. With 88 percent of ballots
recounted, Coleman stubbornly clings to his lead over Al Franken,
but Franken and the Democrats appear willing to pry that seat
from Republican hands by any means necessary — perhaps including
having the Democrat-controlled Senate vote to seat Sen. Stuart
Smalley.
When all the returns were in, freshman Sen. Saxby Chambliss fell
just short of an absolute majority and was forced into a runoff
against Democrat Jim Martin. Zell Miller, a conservative Democrat
who endorsed against Chambliss in 2002 but supports his
reelection now, calls Chambliss “the last man standing” against a
“far-left agenda” sailing through the Senate without debate. In
the event Coleman is unseated, Zig Zag Zell is right: Chambliss
will be the last Republican capable of keeping the Democrats from
getting to 60 Senate seats after all.
TUESDAYS’S RUNOFF has now become a focal point in the battle for
the Senate. President-elect Barack Obama has kept 25 of his
Georgia field offices open to help Martin’s campaign and left
much of his paid in-state staff intact. Obama field operatives
from throughout the South and as far away as Ohio have streamed
into Georgia to support the Democratic Senate candidate.
Meanwhile, John McCain and the base-friendly Sarah Palin have
each traveled to Georgia to stump for Chambliss, the latter four
times. The McCain-Palin ticket carried the state with 52 percent
of the vote, despite Obama’s vast field operation and substantial
black turnout. Chambliss ran behind McCain, taking 49.8 percent
of the vote to Martin’s 46.8 percent.
One reason for the difference: Libertarian Party candidate Allen
Buckley’s presence in the race. Buckley received nearly 3.5
percent of the vote, running almost 100,000 votes ahead of
Libertarian presidential nominee Bob Barr — even though Barr had
served as a Republican congressman from Georgia and polled as
high as 8 percent statewide in the presidential contest. Many of
those voters were fiscal conservatives upset with Chambliss’s
vote for the $700 billion Wall Street bailout — or, as he
prefers to describe it, “the financial rescue package.”
“It’s for the people, by the people,” an anti-bailout
conservative told the Politico in late October. “I think
that 99 percent of the phone calls that Saxby got were for him to
vote against the bailout, yet he did it anyway. He’s supposed to
represent the people of the state of Georgia.… By far, the vast
majority did not want the bailout.”
Chambliss has been trying to win such voters back by hitting his
Democratic opponent’s liberal voting record as a member of the
Georgia state legislature. In a conference call last month, he
described Martin as “the most liberal member of the state house”
and someone who “supports partial-birth abortion, supports gun
control, voted against making English the official language of
Georgia, he voted against toughening laws against child
prostitution.” Chambliss concluded that Martin has “nothing in
common” with people who voted Libertarian in November (the
senator may be a little hazy on the Libertarian Party’s position
on prostitution).
The parallel is the 1992 Georgia Senate race. A Libertarian
candidate won more votes than incumbent Democratic Sen. Wyche
Fowler’s Election Day margin over Republican Paul Coverdell.
Fowler did not get the required 50 percent plus one, however, and
the race went to a runoff. Eliminated from the second round of
voting, the Libertarian endorsed Coverdell, who went on to become
Georgia’s next U.S. senator.
DON’T EXPECT a repeat this time around, Libertarians say. Buckley
has refused to endorse either major party candidate and has
criticized Chambliss not only on the bailout, but also on civil
liberties and the Iraq war. The Libertarian also-ran drew up a
statement
of principles (pdf) for the two candidates to sign but
neither one bit. Buckley told a blogger for the Atlanta
Journal Constitution, “I believe Martin would be better with
respect to civil liberties. It’s hard to believe he could be
worse than Chambliss on fiscal matters, but he could be so.”
The Libertarian’s voters may be just as conflicted. According to
Public Policy Polling, 36 percent of them supported John McCain
for president, 32 percent voted for Barack Obama, and another 30
percent were for Bob Barr. Buckley’s support also skewed younger
than Chambliss’s.
Even without the Libertarian’s support, Chambliss has many of the
advantages Coverdell enjoyed in the 1992 runoff — and a few he
didn’t. This will be the first opportunity for conservative
Georgians to rebuke a Democratic president-elect. In ‘92, that
president-elect had carried Georgia (with help from Ross Perot).
In 2008, Georgia voted Republican for president. Sixteen years
ago, Fowler won the first round of voting. This time out,
Chambliss finished first in November.
That gives Chambliss a distinct advantage heading into the
lower-turnout runoff election, one that has been reflected in
the polls. Chambliss finished ahead of Martin in November
with a Libertarian on the ballot and Obama bringing record
numbers of new black voters to the polls. Will he not do so again
without them? White men account for 36 percent of the
half-million early votes already cast, up from 27 percent on
Election Day.
Saxby Chambliss isn’t taking anything for granted. Neither are
the libertarian-leaning voters who may help decide the election.
With the race down to two candidates, they can reelect a
Republican who has sometimes supported the Bush-era
big-government conservatism that has so tarnished the GOP brand
— or try their luck with a Democratic supermajority eager to
grow government at rates unseen since the Great Society’s heyday.
For the GOP, it’s still filibuster or bust.
