To many political observers, the month after a primary battle, particularly one with such a long pause between any runoff contests, seems a natural time to kick back and reset for the coming battles. But it isn’t.
In many ways Jack Kingston’s only active and visible opponent is the news media. And while the stories about an ex-felon and bonus money being converted into campaign donations might seem compelling to journalists, it is having little if no impact on GOP activists or likely voters. Even the most ardent of ethics champions such as state Senator Josh McKoon (R-Columbus) seem to doubt the impact on Kingston.
While Jack Kingston has amassed endorsements, and ads promoting his candidacy have flooded the airwaves post-primary, the David Perdue camp has been relegated to “earned media.” Suddenly the man who struck first and so brilliantly with his TV ads has gone silent.
And if David Perdue remains off of TV for another week or so his race may well be over. That’s because the end of June quickly morphs into the Fourth of July, which lands on a Friday this year. That timing will effectively lure the entire state into a holiday trance from about the Wednesday prior to Independence Day until Monday July 7. Anyone who has ever run political ads during that time period knows that they are useless, and if they are run as an attack ad on an opponent, they can smack of being somewhat unpatriotic dirty pool.
And Perdue must go negative, hard negative, to defeat Kingston in a runoff in which voter turnout will be heavily in Kingston’s favor.
So the question is that of Perdue’s desire to keep spending his own money. And moreover, how to spend it.
If David Perdue returns to the airwaves the week of July 7, it is just possible that he won’t be attacking Kingston with gusto. That’s because Perdue and his backers may already have realized that their candidate’s true future may well rest in the same office David Perdue’s cousin held.
Because Perdue has suffered virtually no serious negative damage from his run for the Senate, a Perdue candidacy for governor in four short years would likely be a very viable campaign. His name identification now far outstrips that of Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, as well as Secretary of State Brian Kemp, two names frequently mentioned as potential 2018 candidates for the top job.
Perdue might just choose to use his money casting himself as an outsider and reformer, hoping to tarnish Kingston with some tasty guilt-by-association pictures or tape of the Georgia lawmaker standing next to or talking intensely with one Eric Cantor. An intriguing theme, but hardly a gut punch.
Such an approach might make the race marginally different, but would likely not put Perdue close to defeating Kingston. And the latest “Watergate” that seems to uniquely follow only Republicans in contention for, or holding, top office in Georgia would be left to simmer in a soup to be served to the benefit of Democrat Michelle Nunn in a Kingston-Nunn showdown.
The next few weeks will tell the story of not only the GOP battle for the U.S. Senate, but the possible makeup of a 2018 GOP race for governor.
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As for the current gubernatorial race, young Jason Carter continues to set the stage for a missed opportunity and rather substantial defeat by Nathan Deal.
After going hard right on issues where many Republicans were more sympathetically moderate, that being the so-called “guns everywhere” bill and the Confederate vanity tag, Carter is mistakenly pushing more liberal hot buttons he needn’t be pushing so early in the contest. When asked correctly, polling shows that most independent voters, who make up the swing vote in this year’s contest, don’t care about expanding Medicaid, particularly as a part of “Obamacare,” which they detest.
Carter’s very recent declarations calling for such an expansion, while arguably compassionate, are politically silly. They help reinforce the message from Deal supporters that Carter is supportive of the Affordable Care Act. This was another amateurish and very premature outreach to a constituency better reached through robocalls, directed social media and mailing in early November.
Each time the Carter team follows what appears to them to be “conventional Georgia wisdom” such as being pro-gun rights (those folks aren’t voting for Jason Carter even if he is “armed and dangerous”), or when he lets his more liberal heart bleed over Medicaid, they blunt the effectiveness of what “brung them there” in earlier tight polling.
A Carter win required surgical and segmented attacks and completely different themes.
For example, like it or not, about 40% of the state’s most significant Republican county, Cobb, disapprove of the county helping build a new stadium for the Braves. And when any public tax dollars enter into the mix, the vast majority of Cobb voters who vote in GOP primaries say they oppose the deal.
Carter has allowed the one move that could have sliced into the heart of the GOP to go untouched. A pledge that no state action to advance a taxpayer supported stadium, from road planning to you-name-it, would have boosted Carter and likely if pushed, could have delivered him votes. But he wasted the opportunity by basically sitting on his hands over the issue, likely as fearful of an effort in Cobb as would be a Republican of a similar effort in Carter’s home of DeKalb County.
Carter was close in the polls for several months because of a snowstorm and an ethics cloud. But that ethics cloud was neatly put away by lawyers from the state with money that avoided what could have been very timely litigation.
And trying to run the conventional campaign the Carter team ran the conventional and worthless “feel good” ad. While those positive ads have been running the only candidate to come up in the polls has been Gov. Deal.
Carter should have gone after Deal early-on and with both guns blazing. He should have hit Deal with the entire snow debacle, morphing into a symbol of whatever else he could. But he has missed his shot. A governor who I would have guessed just days ago might be shoved into a runoff in the very untimely and potentially snowy period of January of next year, now looks to be a comfortable winner by at least five points.
The great campaigns put their foot on their opponent’s throat and never let up. They define their opponent before their opponent defines themselves.
Perhaps Jason Carter and David Perdue are both really thinking about another race, one to be held in 2018. Both may be saving their real juice for then and are basically building their profiles at present. These are the days when campaigns must spend money they barely have and take advantage of moments when the opponent is weak.
That is not the case with either Perdue or Carter.
