As everyone knows, there are three Senate seats yet to be determined, in Alaska, Minnesota, and Georgia. The race in Georgia is fundamentally different, however, in that Democrat Jim Martin will more than likely face a re-vote on December 2nd.
This race should interest us as both a chance to add one more Democrat to the Senate and also as an early indicator of the extent of Obama's electoral coattails.
The reason for the re-vote is that while Chambliss holds a small lead in the race, he appears to have fallen short of the 50% +1 mark required for victory, and so that means under Georgia law that there will have to be a runoff election.
Georgia is, in many ways, a story of two states. There's urban, metropolitan Atlanta, and then there's everything else. The huge population of Atlanta and its ever-expanding metro area delivered fully one third of Democrat Martin's 1.7million vote total.
What's interesting is that even though Martin received a huge vote total from Atlanta, he underperformed Obama in every metro Atlanta county. But in rural south Georgia, he tended to outperform Obama, carrying eight counties that Obama lost (in Mitchell County where Obama lost by four points, he tied Saxby Chambliss).
In most of the rural, south Georgia counties, Martin did better than Obama even when he lost.
What to do? What to do?
The AJC reports what everyone might expect, that the Jim Martin campaign is hoping for an Obama intervention:
Our campaign has talked to their campaign,” said Martin spokeswoman Kate Hansen. “And that it as far as it has gone. We would be honored to have him. We know his operation is incredibly busy right now.”
No word yet from the Obama campaign--er, transition team, whether Georgia will get a visit from the President-elect.
Would an Obama-Martin ad blitz effectively re-motivate the huge numbers of African American voters in and around Atlanta, along with those in Augusta, Savannah and Macon? Could a visit from the incoming President, a huge rally in Atlanta, help to put Martin over the top on December 2?
Or would it tamp down rural support, especially in the counties where resentment towards Atlanta runs high, and where there is likely to be a lot of anger and disappointment about McCain's recent loss?
There's anecdotal evidence that Obama might not help Martin, since then-President-Elect Clinton's campaigning for Democrat Wyche Fowler in a 1992 runoff was unsuccessful.
Obama has reason to stay out, too: a Democratic loss in a tightly contested Senate runoff in which he campaigned for the challenger would be an early and perhaps unnecessary blow to his "mandate aura"
But I think Martin's instincts are right--his fortunes in the upcoming runoff depend largely on whether or not Obama will find the time to help him campaign. This can come in a lot of forms, for sure, but it's hard to imagine anything more helpful than a visit to the State. Don't let the rural counties fool you. In most of them, there were fewer than 6,000 total voters for the general.
I think it's time to test the coattails: Martin needs Atlanta to come out big for him on December 2nd, and I'm increasingly convinced that he can't guarantee that without an Obama lifeline.