VIDALIA, Ga. — John Barrow is a Democrat endorsed by Barack
Obama. Or, depending on who he’s talking to, John Barrow is
fighting against Barack Obama and the Democrats. Judging from his
campaign’s mixed messages, Barrow believes a majority of voters in
Georgia’s 12th District want to re-elect a one-man bipartisan
compromise.
In a mailing sent out last week, the
Democrat congressman told independent voters
that he is “not a rubber stamp” and bragged that he has
“stood up to Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats in
Washington.”
Of course, that’s not the message Barrow sent to
Democrats. The three-term incumbent sent them a different mailer,
featuring a photo of the president with the slogan “Now More Than
Ever” and the message: “John Barrow
is working hand in hand with President Obama.” Meanwhile,
listeners to black-oriented radio stations in the southeast Georgia
district are hearing ads that tout Obama’s endorsement of
Barrow.
Barrow’s schizophrenic campaign demonstrates the
precarious political calculus for a Blue Dog Democrat seeking
re-election in a year when his party is unpopular and when
Republicans are on the winning side of what has been termed the
“enthusiasm gap.” Major polls show the GOP strongly leading among
likely voters on the so-called
“generic” ballot question — by
10 points at CNN and 13
points at Fox. These polls and other indicators have been
widely interpreted as signaling huge gains for Republicans in the
mid-term election — what Weekly Standard analyst
Jay Cost has called the “Hulk” scenario, with the GOP adding
upwards of 60 seats in the House of Representatives.
If an overwhelming Election Day tsunami comes crashing
down on Democrats tomorrow, it could end Barrow’s six-year career
as a flip-flopping congressional weathervane and make his
Republican challenger
Ray McKinney the Cinderella story of 2010. National political
oddsmakers rate Barrow a heavy favorite to win re-election —
primarily because of a 9-to-1 fundraising advantage over McKinney
— but none of those oddsmakers have driven down U.S. 25 from
Augusta to Waynesboro. McKinney for Congress signs line the highway
and there is nary a Barrow sign to be seen. If the national pundits
had been listening to their car radios while they made that drive,
they might have heard McKinney’s folksy voice in one of the ads now
running in regular rotation on stations throughout the 12th
District. Nor have the pundits talked to disaffected Democrats like
the former Barrow supporter near Swainsboro who now has McKinney’s
sign in his front yard and gave the Republican candidate an earful
in a recent phone conversation. “That son of a bitch won’t return
my phone calls,” the Emanuel County resident said of the Democrat
incumbent. McKinney says he’s heard similar complaints from many
other former Barrow supporters.
It has been said that the plural of anecdote is data, and
McKinney and his campaign staffers say several statistical measures
point their way. In Democrat-leaning counties that had heavy early
voting and strong numbers for Obama in 2008, early voting totals
are much lower this year and reported to be splitting 50/50 between
Barrow and McKinney. There is also evidence that Barrow (who was
challenged by black former state Sen. Regina Thomas in the
Democratic primary) isn’t generating much enthusiasm this year from
black voters. Although 45 percent of 12th District residents are
black, they reportedly made up only 35 percent of early voters this
year — and not all of them are voting for Barrow.
None of this has been reported outside Georgia, which is
probably why New York Times analyst Nate Silver
predicted Sunday that Barrow would be re-elected with 61
percent of the vote — a forecast that McKinney communications
director Tom Krause laughs off as an absurdity. Silver seems to
have included in his calculations the anomalous result in 2008,
when the Obama surge helped Barrow win 66 percent of the vote. But
this year is far more likely to resemble the 2006 mid-term, when
Barrow was re-elected by a margin of just 864 votes. “You take 2008
out of the equation and the numbers look entirely different,”
Krause says. “In 2008, you had thousands and thousands of
first-time voters who are not coming back for John Barrow. They’re
not coming back for [Democratic gubernatorial candidate] Roy
Barnes.”
As in so many places across the country, many voters in
Georgia’s
12th District — which encompasses one-sixth of the land area
of the state, with 19 counties and parts of three others — are
discontented with the Obama administration’s failure to cope with
the economic downturn. Unemployment is high here (11.8 percent in
Toombs County) and McKinney, a project manager who works on
nuclear power plants, has published a 19-page
job-creation plan. His grassroots-oriented campaign has been
timed to peak on Election Day.
“The one thing we knew was that we couldn’t go toe-to-toe
with John Barrow on the money front,” McKinney explained Sunday
afternoon as he leaned against his SUV in front of his campaign
headquarters on Main Street here. He got a big boost three weeks
ago when he was
endorsed by Sarah Palin, outside groups have made some
independent expenditures, and the state GOP is supporting
McKinney’s get-out-the-vote operation. However, the disparity in
financial resources still required the challenger to husband his
resources until the final weeks of the campaign. Radio listeners in
the district are now hearing an ad featuring sound bites from
McKinney’s one and only debate with the incumbent. “I agree with a
lot of what Ray’s just said.… What I’m talking about is
substantially the same and entirely consistent with what Ray’s
talking about,” Barrow says in the ad, which ends with McKinney
telling listeners: “On Nov. 2, you should vote for Ray McKinney for
Congress. I wonder if John Barrow will agree with that,
too?”
Last week,
John Fund of the Wall Street Journal picked this race
as one of “five districts that could deliver upset victories.”
Based on the campaign’s internal polling, McKinney says the outcome
of this race is still in the hands of independent voters who will
show up on Election Day. As for Barrow, McKinney says: “We know
what he knows, which is that he’s in trouble.”
