In a sense Jason Carter is running against not just Republican Nathan Deal for governor, but also against Barack Obama. Polls show that Georgia has some reservations about Gov. Deal, but more about the Democratic president.
To the extent that Carter can make his nemesis Deal and simultaneously distance himself from Obama, he has a shot at winning the Governor’s Mansion in November.
This will require a tightrope act. Carter shows signs of running with an (unacknowledged) dual campaign strategy; he likely will fashion himself in paid and unpaid media as a centrist Democrat in the mode of, say, Zell Miller. At the same time he will employ what his campaign vows is a sophisticated get-out-the-vote operation that will appeal to the Democratic voter base of blacks and urban liberals.
The Carter campaign has not been secretive about projecting the Democratic turnout needed to win the race. Carter’s brain trust estimates that he will need 1.3 million of the 1.7 million Georgia voters who voted for President Obama in 2012 to vote for Carter this fall. But Carter adds that he’ll need additional liberal votes – at least 200,000 of what he calls Georgia’s 600,000 ‘unregistered Democrats.’ That means locating them, registering them, and making sure they actually vote.
These are ambitious goals, considering that almost twice as many Georgians voted in the May GOP primary as voted in the Democratic primary. (The GOP primary had the advantage of featuring a contested U.S. Senate race, but that’s still a huge discrepancy in turnout.)
Even so the Carter camp is confident. They’re ready to use what they say is a sophisticated computerized system to identify and reach out to the demographics they need to win. The effort may or may not propel Democratic turnout into at least the neighborhood of what it was in the last presidential election here; but the Carter campaign at least expects it to drum up more ‘extra’ Democratic votes than any previous mid-term election in Georgia.
The second part of the campaign plan is to appeal to political independents and other potential undecided voters. The buzzwords in Carter’s first two television ads reveal the strategy in defining Carter in the public’s mind: “kids,” “middle class,” “small business,” “lobbyists” (boo), “tax increases” (boo), working “across party lines,” “right/wrong direction,” and “ethics.” (Use off the latter word is likely setting up a direct attack down the road on Nathan Deal’s alleged cronyism.)
Another manifestation of this strategy is revealed in things like Carter’s support for the ‘guns everywhere’ law, and for Confederate flag vanity license plates. But it’s always risky for a Democrat to try to ‘out-conservative the conservatives.’ He could potentially lose votes among his base without picking up any conservative or independent votes to counter that loss. It’s a calculated risk.
Carter has said publicly that he plans to set up extensive campaign operations in rural Georgia – he won’t concede the white vote in the hinterlands.
In short, Carter likely is going to make the political status quo the bad guy. The key will be whether he can make Deal represent that status quo instead of Obama.
Look for grandfather Jimmy Carter to actively campaign for Jason before it’s over. Polls show that about one third of Georgians disapprove of the former president, but most of those people likely are going to vote Republican anyway. Some 60 percent approve of Jimmy Carter, and the younger the voters, the more likely they are to like the 39th president. This is almost certainly because the younger Georgians know Jimmy Carter more as a beneficent former president than as a one-term president a generation ago.
If Jason Carter seeks to openly criticize President Obama, or to publicly distance himself from the White House, he may well use his grandfather to do that dirty work somehow.
Another interesting dynamic will be whether and to what extent Carter will seek to align his candidacy with that of Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Michelle Nunn. A Carter/Nunn ‘ticket’ has interesting appeal on the surface – two political legacies seeking to bring back a taste of the good-ole days for Democrats in Georgia. This catchy concept might work in raising more out-off-state money than otherwise.
The potential disadvantage arises from the fact that Nunn is seeking a seat in Washington, working for now-senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. It might be harder for Carter to avoid identification with President Obama and the DC Democrats if he is seen as holding the hand of Michelle Nunn.
The most encouraging thing so far for Jason Carter is that he is roughly equal with (or even ahead of) an incumbent Republican governor in a red state, and in a time in which the Democratic president is floundering politically.
Can Jason Carter pull off the miracle? It’s possible. And that’s saying plenty.
