Loudermilk Cruises in CD 11
Barry Loudermilk won the race for Georgia’s 11th Congressional District with relative ease on Tuesday, taking the contest by a margin of 66% to opponent Bob Barr’s 34%. The result was not unexpected, though the wide margin may have taken some by surprise. Bob Barr needed to win his home base of Cobb County by a significant margin in order to have any chance, but unfortunately for the former Congressman the county went to Loudermilk just as it did in the primary.
Loudermilk’s internal polling indicated that he held a sizable lead, a fact which allowed him to stay away from negative attacks and continue to build off the positive momentum he gained through winning a plurality of votes in the primary. Loudermilk managed to outflank Barr from the right, which put the ex-Presidential candidate in a tough spot as he tried to claw his way back into contention during the long runoff period. Support from the Tea Party, most notably from The Club for Growth, served to further snowball his advantage.
The former State Senator fills the seat of Phil Gingrey, who lost in the U.S. Senate primary to fellow Rep. Jack Kingston and eventual nominee David Perdue. The heavily conservative district, which does not feature a Democratic nominee for the November general election, is made up of parts of Cobb, Cherokee, Fulton, and Bartow counties.
Further analysis of this result and of the other Congressional races to come.
Topsy Turvy Night for the Tea Party
The Tea Party has had an up and down year across the nation, and Tuesday night’s results in Georgia proved no different.
In Georgia’s first Congressional District Tea Party darling Dr. Bob Johnson lost to establishment candidate Buddy Carter by 8%, losing by the widest margin in Chatham County, home of Savannah and the heart of the district. The Club for Growth poured money into television late in the race, but it wasn’t enough to make up for Buddy Carter’s nearly unanimous support from elected officials in South Georgia.
Jody Hice defeated Mike Collins in CD 10 in what may have been the nastiest runoff in the state, and in what promises to be a closely watched district in the general election. Hice, a staunch social Conservative, was surrounded by controversy in the runoff for comments he had made in the past as an author and radio host. In the end though, the district that elected Paul Broun to Congress didn’t shy away from a candidate who may be even further to the right, electing Hice by 9% of the vote. Hice received Tea Party support throughout the primary and runoff, a fact which showed most in Hice’s excellent grassroots support. In the end, the drama surrounding Hice’s comments and the rumors of Democrats crossing over to vote for Collins came to naught, and Hice will move on to November.
CD 11 saw the aforementioned Barry Loudermilk ride his wave of Tea Party support to an easy win over rival Bob Barr, in a race bereft of the drama that was so present in the other two Congressional races. The more conservative candidate took the conservative district, and with no Democratic opponent in the general election Loudermilk will carry the Tea Party banner to Washington D.C.
The Senate race saw David Perdue score a stunning upset over Jack Kingston in a race that the Tea Party didn’t really factor in to. Yes, Tea Party leaders endorsed Kingston after the primary saw their favorites in Karen Handel and Paul Broun bow out, but that support was always nominal. It was always going to be hard for the Tea Party to get whipped into any sort of fervor for a 22 year veteran of Congress whose biggest ally was the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. It says a lot about David Perdue and his big business background that the Tea Party even chose to support an ‘insider’ like Kingston in the race. Expect the Tea Party to rally around the GOP candidate now though as he squares off against Michelle Nunn in November.
