Months and months ago we told you that Jason Carter would be a formidable candidate for governor. In fact, InsiderAdvantage was the first to release a poll showing Democrat Carter leading GOP Gov. Nathan Deal. But that was while memories of a giant snowstorm remained on the mind of most voters. It’s now July and those snowflakes have melted.
Fortunately for Carter, greenbacks don’t melt. His campaign proudly touts its advantage over the incumbent in recent fundraising reports. In a column I penned for Creators Syndicate last year, I predicted that a then-potential Carter campaign, using its connections through former President Jimmy Carter (coupled with a Senate run by Michelle Nunn) would likely raise the money necessary to keep pace with Deal.
But now he is a candidate and his fundraising prowess is proving to be substantial. Much of the money raised has gone to relatively soft ads showing Carter with his young and attractive family. In many ways it’s 1970 all over again when his grandfather ran for governor. But is it really?
The Carter campaign takes notable offense at criticism of their strategy, which is understandable. The Deal camp can be just as touchy— even if they don’t want anyone to know it. So rather than beat up on the recent ad campaign by Carter, it would likely be more productive to simply look at where the campaign is and why the path to victory is so very precarious.
Running a campaign is much like flying a plane. You have only so much fuel and if you get too far off your flight plan, you could end up landing on fumes, or crashing.
As the legislative session ended it seemed most likely that the Deal campaign was the flight that was headed in the wrong direction. Its TV ads were centered on a rather boring economic development message and the governor’s numbers were not improving as they ran. Even the GOP primary yielded a less than fantastic result, given that nearly 30 percent of Republican voters chose one of his extraordinarily weak opponents.
But since then Deal has enjoyed substantial good fortune.
First, the “ethics debacle” expected to play out in civil lawsuits in October and November were settled. Then, while on a highly-publicized trade mission to Israel, Deal received word from CNBC that the business cable network had chosen Georgia as the best place to do business in America. Deal’s polling numbers have continued to rise. Carter has lost the three point advantage over the incumbent that he enjoyed last March, now trailing by a fairly substantial margin.
Some of that decline for Carter has come from a hurting placed on him by third party groups. And they have the money to keep delivering the blows. While the Carter camp sought to “introduce” their candidate, Republicans spent airtime making their own not-so-flattering introduction.
So, with the final months of this race approaching, the governor is once again the favorite. Carter, running what has been accurately described as a more traditional Democratic campaign (as compared to Michelle Nunn in her bid for the U.S. Senate), is now the underdog.
Going back to that airplane analogy, it’s now a matter of how much fuel (dollars) the candidates have and how they burn it up.
Carter raised more (cash that is) during the most recent reporting period, but has less available than Deal. That means that he can’t afford to be off course in the coming months. It means that his campaign will have to avoid providing the public with “friendly flying” and turn to dropping well- placed bombs on the TV airwaves.
For Deal the path can, for the time being, be more of an “autopilot” campaign. But, yes, there will be bumps along the way.
Surely we all expect the headlines that will somehow suggest that the FBI and Justice Department have someone close to Deal ready to go down. But that’s nothing new. Even as far back as
to the first GOP gubernatorial race (in modern times) to be competitive, that of Guy Millner in 1994, endless stories suggested a likely Secret Service/ Justice Department thumping of Millner operatives. That was over an alleged illegal credit search of Shirley Miller’s credit history in an effort to do in her husband, incumbent Zell Miller. Millner barely lost, even at a time when Democrats ruled the state. After the election was well over a rather bland report stated that no crime had occurred because no credit report was ever run.
That’s not to say that Deal’s alleged ethics issues couldn’t be made an issue. Nor the fact that his emergency management agency head — who likely has more face recognition than the governor– could not be made the poster boy for every ill the Carter camp might claim to exist in state government. And don’t forget those Department of Family and Children Services stories predicted here months ago. All these could be made into a recipe for Democrat traction.
But fighting a governor who just dumped a bucket of money into education– an issue that never decides races in Georgia– is a diversion from a potentially successful flight path. The more fuel used on such losing Carter ads, the less available to drop the real bombs. As other news polls confirm our recent one for Fox5, the more likely it will be that the Georgia contest for governor moves from that “toss up” position that our own polling just months ago helped establish, and back to that “leans GOP” status. That status can cut off critically needed national funding in the final months of a campaign.
Carter is truly a fresh face-type, likeable candidate who could, in a perfect storm, keep Deal from reaching the magic 50 percent plus one vote number he needs to avoid a dreaded runoff. (The Libertarian Party candidate will likely steal a percentage point or more.) And there is ample time for this race to get closer.
In the end, it really is not how much a campaign has in its tank, it’s more a matter of how and when they use it. For the Carter camp, the flight plan must be radically modified to be truly competitive in the final days of the race. For the Deal campaign, that autopilot has a really happy smile on his face. And if they need it, they have experienced pilots ready to man the controls.
For my part, as a pollster/analyst, I’m not ready to move this race into the “leans Republican” category. It still is, for the moment, a “toss-up.” But if the Carter camp keeps burning money on its current path with the pro-Deal forces continuing to crush Carter on his own issues, this one will start to drift first into a “leans Republican” status and then potentially a “likely GOP” position.
It all depends on how the candidates use that cash to fuel their efforts in the coming months.
