In the race for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate in Georgia, Savannah Congressman Jack Kingston has a big advantage and a big disadvantage, and they are one and the same thing: He is largely seen by many as the GOP ‘establishment’ candidate.
Kingston has the gaudiest government resume of anyone in the Republican field: He is now serving his eleventh term in the U.S. House, and he has never been seriously challenged for reelection.
He’s a respected member of the powerful Appropriations Committee and the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, and he once served as vice-chair of the Republican Conference, the sixth-highest position for a Republican House member.
The soon-to-be 59-year-old also carries the cachet of having been honored for his robust conservatism by the likes of Citizens Against Government Waste, Club for Growth, the National Taxpayers Union, and the National Federation of Independent Business.
But being the establishment candidate will be a badge of shame to a number of conservative and other voters this spring and fall. The job being sought, after all, is that of retiring Sen. Saxby Chambliss. And Chambliss, fairly or not, has earned a reputation among many as exactly what’s wrong with Washington – being an insider’s insider in the morally and professionally deficient gentleman’s club known as the U.S. Senate.
Indeed, at least two of Kingston’s main four rivals from for the GOP nomination already are styling themselves as ‘outsiders’ to the alleged corruption and complacency of Washington; David Perdue as a businessman instead of a career politician, and Congressman Paul Broun as an ideological libertarian purist. (Congressman Phil Gingrey appears to be another ‘establishment’ candidate. Former Georgia Secretary of State and 2010 gubernatorial candidate Karen Handel may lack a defined identity in the public eye, despite her political past.)
But Kingston has one significant advantage that often comes with the territory of being a powerful veteran congressman: He has proven to be adept at campaign fundraising. At the end of 2013, he had about $3.4 million cash on hand, the most of any Senate candidate.
So far he has used that money to air TV campaign ads that emphasize his personal biography and his character – not his congressional record.
That is bound to change, because Kingston’s Washington experience is his identity in the race. His platform is Reaganesque through and through: robust national defense, smaller government, tax reform and deregulation of business to boost employment.
The most recent polling shows Kingston trailing both Perdue and Broun – the two ‘outsiders’ in the race. In one sense, these polls are early ones, in that they mostly have been conducted before the voters have homed in their focus on the primary election. At the same time, it’s already late in the game. The Republican primary is May 20, instead of being in July, as in the past. So there has to be a sense of urgency among the candidates to quickly define themselves and their opponents.
This urgency is as great for Kingston as for anyone, mainly because to date the southeast Georgia congressman has shown a disappointing inability to attract votes in the Atlanta area – a must if he is going to make the likely GOP runoff.
Kingston overall is fortunate in that he already has a ready-made political identity: He is a savvy veteran of the ins and outs of Washington, and he is – by his campaign’s own reckoning – the ‘most conservative’ candidate in the race.
But he is going to have to put his relatively successful fundraising to better use than simply depicting himself as a good man. He’s probably going to have to get creative.
