PeachyPolitics

Stunning Rebuke for Obama: Ga. Re-elects Chambliss in Landslide

ATLANTA — Relieved Republicans celebrated a resounding win in Georgia's hard-fought U.S. Senate runoff, a victory that denied Democrats a filibuster-proof majority and cemented the state's reputation as a GOP bastion.

Sen. Saxby Chambliss trounced Democrat Jim Martin Tuesday night, winning his second term by a margin of more than 10 percentage points. The race dashed Democrats' hopes of a 60-seat majority immune to Senate filibusters, which would have given President-elect Barack Obama a stronger hand moving his agenda.

A Martin victory was a longshot in Georgia. A Democrat hasn't won an open statewide seat since 1998.

Martin hoped to capitalize on excitement surrounding Obama but was unable to get many of the president elect's voters back to the polls one month after the general election. Obama never came to the state to campaign for Martin, although he recorded automated phone calls and a radio ad for the former state lawmaker from Atlanta.

Chambliss revved up the state's vaunted GOP turnout operation and kept a parade of ex-GOP presidential candidates traipsing through the state to whip up enthusiasm. He brought in Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the former candidate for vice president, as his closer. She headlined four rallies for Chambliss across the state Monday that drew thousands of party faithful.

Minnesota - where a recount is under way - now remains the only unresolved Senate contest in the country. But the stakes there are significantly lower now that Georgia has put a 60-seat Democratic supermajority out of reach.

With 99 percent of the precincts reporting, Chambliss captured 57 percent of votes to Martin's 43 percent. It was a rare bright spot for Republicans in a year where they lost the White House, along with several House and Senate seats.

Martin called Chambliss to concede before 10 p.m., then emerged to tell supporters as his voice cracked: "For me and my family and campaign team and all of you this is a sad moment.

Chambliss portrayed himself as a firewall against Democrats in Washington getting a blank check.

"You have delivered a message that a balance in government in Washington is necessary and that's not only what the people of Georgia want, it's what the people of America want," Chambliss told 500 cheering supporters at a victory rally in Cobb County.

Martin, 63, made the economy the centerpiece of his bid, casting himself as a champion for the neglected middle class.

With most precincts reporting, turnout stood at about 35 percent. That's higher than the 20 percent predicted by a spokesman for Secretary of State Karen Handel, but it's far less than the 65 percent who voted in last month's general election.

The runoff between the former University of Georgia fraternity brothers was necessary after a three-way general election prevented any of the candidates from getting the necessary 50 percent.

Chambliss came to the Senate in 2002 after defeating Democratic Sen. Max Cleland in a campaign that infuriated Democrats. Chambliss ran a TV ad that questioned Cleland's commitment to national security and flashed a photo of Osama bin Laden. Cleland is a triple amputee wounded in the Vietnam War.

He was a loyal supporter of President Bush and, as a freshman, rose to become chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee. The former agriculture lawyer from Moultrie has been the ranking Republican on the panel since Democrats won control of the Senate.

Some 3.7 million people cast ballots in this year's general election, and both sides have since tried to keep voters' attention with a barrage of ads and visits by political heavy-hitters.

Former President Bill Clinton and former Vice President Al Gore both stumped for Martin.

GOP nominee John McCain, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee hit the stump for Chambliss.

Democrat Zell Miller Backs Chambliss in Ga.

Former Democratic Senator and Georgia Governor Zell Miller has endorsed Republican incumbent Sen. Saxby Chambliss in the upcoming runoff election in Georgia against Democratic challenger Jim Martin.

The Republican National Senatorial Committee is running a Web-only ad featuring a speech that Miller delivered at a Chambliss rally on Thursday.

Neither Chambliss nor Martin garnered 50 percent of the vote on Election Day, necessitating a runoff on Dec. 2.

Mindful that Democrats could have 59 Senate seats by that time, one short of a filibuster-proof majority, Miller told the gathering that Saxby “could well be the last man standing [against] a far-left liberal agenda sailing through the U.S. Senate, an agenda that Jim Martin just can’t wait to help move on.”

Miller said when he was governor, “I proposed a $100 million tax cut for Georgia. Guess who [was] the very first state legislator [who] popped up and said, this is wrong, we’ve got too many unmet needs to do it? You guessed it. His name was Jim Martin.

“Unmet needs. I think the greatest unmet need is getting that money back to the taxpayers.

“I have served with both these men in this race. And there is no question in my mind or in my heart which one is the best prepared to serve our country and serve our state. And that is our senior Senator, Saxby Chambliss.”

Miller served as Georgia governor from 1991 to 1999, and delivered the keynote speech at the 1992 Democratic convention. But in the years since he has been drifting to the right.

He was appointed to the U.S. Senate from Georgia after the death of Paul Coverdell in July 2000, and retained his seat in a special election the following November.

In 2004, Miller delivered the keynote speech at the GOP convention, and he backed President George W. Bush over John Kerry in the general election.

Miller did not run for re-election and left the Senate in 2005.

In the RNSC ad, he alludes to President-elect Barack Obama’s likely economic policies and declares: “I don’t like this spread the wealth. To steal from Peter to pay Paul even if it gets Paul to vote for you, is wrong, wrong, wrong.”

Runoff Likely In Georgia Senate Race

ATLANTA — The last seat of the new Senate will likely be determined by a runoff in Georgia, where Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss apparently came just short of winning enough votes to send him to a second term.

With 99 percent of precincts reporting Wednesday, Chambliss had 49.8 percent of the vote, shy of the 50 percent plus one required under state law to avoid a runoff. The mild-mannered Democrat Jim Martin, a former Georgia legislator and once-reluctant Senate candidate, won 46.8 percent of the vote. Libertarian Allen Buckley pulled 3.4 percent.

Some absentee votes were still being counted late Wednesday. However, if the current results hold, Chambliss would face Martin on Dec. 2.

"We're prepared for a runoff. We have already hit the ground," said Chambliss, who was expected to coast to re-election in reliably GOP Georgia before the nation's economy faltered, fueling a wave of anti-incumbent frustration. Some conservatives were angered that Chambliss backed the $700 billion bailout.

Martin said he had already been in touch with Barack Obama's campaign, but there were no immediate plans for the president-elect to visit Georgia. "The runoff race begins right now," Martin said.

It would be the first test of whether Obama can mobilize voters when he is not on the ballot. On Tuesday, Democrats added three seats to their Senate majority, but even if they swept the remaining still undecided races, they would fall short of the filibuster-proof, 60-vote majority.

Runoff results from top vote getters have been mixed in Georgia.

Of 215 local and statewide runoffs held between 1970 and 1986, the top vote getter in the general election won the runoff 69 percent of the time, according to the book "Politics in Georgia."

But more recently, incumbent Sen. Wyche Fowler led on Election Day before ultimately losing a runoff in 1992. A public service commissioner suffered the same fate in 2006.

Some claim Georgia's runoff law was intended to thin black voting strength and prevent African-American candidates who led in primaries from making it to the general election. Black front-runners in the primary won just 50 percent of runoffs when they faced white candidates between 1970 and 1986, according to "Politics in Georgia."

By Paul Weyrich

There has been a major development in the State of Georgia yet the so-called mainstream media has completely ignored it and even the alternative media hardly has covered it. This past week Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue signed into law the most expansive school-choice program in the nation.

Unlike similar programs in other States, this program has no demographic restriction. All students are eligible for private school scholarships. The State Legislature set the cost of the school choice budget at $50 million. If the demand is similar in other States that amount likely will rise considerably. All pupils K-12 are eligible.

The program is similar to that which was enacted by the State of Louisiana and continues a trend imposing no eligibility requirement for the scholarships. Originally only inner-city students in failing public schools were eligible for school-choice programs. But now Arizona, Vermont, Ohio, Maine, Illinois and Iowa all impose no eligibility restriction.

Robert Enlow, Executive Director of the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, in commenting on the developments in Louisiana and Georgia said, "The old idea of limiting school choice based on family income is coming to an end. States are increasingly adopting Milton Friedman's vision of school choice for all, not just for some. The argument that freedom is only good for some students just doesn't make it anymore".

Lydia Glaize, one of the parents who strongly supported school choice, said, "The Governor has made the most prolific change for the State of Georgia.... Children who will receive these scholarships will translate into fewer kids in juvenile detention, more who will graduate and more who will wind up in the labor force. That's a better standard of living for the entire Georgia community."

The Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice reports that with the new Georgia law, there are now 23 school choice programs in 14 States plus the District of Columbia. Enlow said that 15 of the programs have no family income restriction for eligibility while nine have no demographic restriction at all. Six are restricted only in that they serve disabled and foster-care students alone.

The effort to pass this measure in the Legislature drew support from the Georgia Family Council, the Georgia Public Policy Foundation, the Southeastern Legal Foundation, the Archdiocese of Atlanta and Americans for Prosperity. In addition a number of national school-choice groups weighed in.

The Wall Street Journal called the Friedman Foundation "the nation's leading voucher advocate." Enlow said his group will be pushing for other States to enact school choice programs soon. In due course the group would like to see a national voucher program passed by Congress.

For many years the teachers unions used scare tactics to prevent school choice programs from enactment. They claimed that voucher programs would destroy the public school system. In fact, faced with competition, school choice has actually strengthened the public schools. Now that the public is able to see that union propaganda was a big lie citizens are more willing to consider vouchers. This is especially true now that it is widely acknowledged that the public school system is broken, graduating young people who hardly can read or write and who fail math and science.

At a time when conservatives are in a funk, believing that nothing good is happening in America, it is time to celebrate this milestone development in Georgia. This is a victory not just for Georgians but for all parents who are concerned with the state of public education in these United States.

Just as Gore represents the blame-America leftists who have pirated the Democratic Party, Miller represents those Democrats who have been set adrift by Gore’s party.

Zell-Al Real Reality Show

John L. Perry: Inquiring minds are asking: Is Al Gore off his meds? What’s Zell Miller doing addressing the Republican National Convention? Informed minds already know the answer.

There’s nothing bi-polar, topsy-turvy or uncharacteristic about what either of those Democrats is doing. Both are being what they actually are. This is a real reality show.

The former Democratic vice president from Tennessee and the retiring Democratic senator from Georgia accurately epitomize what’s become of the Democratic Party in the past decade.

The Democratic Party has become captive of the extreme left in America and thus the logical cote for the political cuckoos in quest of a congenial perch.

Little Albert, as Gore is regarded without tribute in his sort-of home state, it’s no surprise today to see him acting bug-swattin’ nuts on television. After his layer after layer of reinventions, the Al Gore you now see really is the real Al Gore.

Gore has always been most at home deep into the marshes of neo-Marxist, Trotsky-genre radicalism. When his carotid artery starts pumping and his visage turns from pasty blank to raspberry-purple, that’s our Al all right.

The party of Jefferson, Wilson, FDR, Truman, heck, even Carter and Clinton has in the past 10 to 12 years lurched drunkenly to the left. It’s now so hard aport that its new captain might as well be Admiral Gore, with Screechin’ Howard Dean his ideological first mate.

That ungainly, morose Massachusetts senator who will be the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee is little more than an expensively attired, stiff-collar, hereditary-commissioned, ornamental show-off striding the deck as if he actually knew where he was or where the ship is going. Kerry may surmise he’s captain, but watch the mutiny should he dare order a tack to starboard.

Just as the Democratic Party has caromed off to the left so far it is the perfect platform for the likes of Gore, so has it left Miller no comfortable planking to plant his feet other than amidships of the Republican Party.

No, it’s not Zell who has changed his compass heading. It’s the Democratic Party that’s gone missing.

When Gore disgorges, he stokes the adrenalin of homesick far-leftists who are not numerous enough to elect dogcatchers and have nowhere else to go unless it is to help Ralph Nader and his leftover wobblies give George W. Bush an even-wider margin of victory in November.

When Miller mounts the Republican convention podium and warns America about an “out-of-touch, ultraliberal from Taxachusetts” that his Democratic Party has come up with this year, he will be speaking to the hearts and minds of millions of other voters of independent mind who, along with him, have been betrayed.

So, blather on, Al. Give ‘em hell, Zell.

If the U.S. Supreme Court upholds Indiana's harsh voter ID law, as it seems poised to do, hundreds of thousands of black Americans should march in protest. So should hundreds of thousands of Latino Americans. Native Americans, too. Political activists from across the ethnic spectrum should convene the biggest political demonstration since the historic March on Washington in 1963.

Where is Al Sharpton when a genuinely critical issue comes along? Where's Jesse Jackson?

The GOP-led campaign to pass stringent voter ID laws is a greater injustice than the prosecutions of the Jena Six, more significant than the incarceration of Michael Vick, more damaging than the insulting rants of Don Imus. This is a brazen effort to block the votes of thousands of people of color who might have the temerity to vote for Democrats. And it's un-American.

As happened in several states, including Georgia, the then-GOP-dominated Indiana Legislature pushed through a rigid law in 2005 requiring voters to produce a state-sponsored photo ID at the poll. While the Republican spin machine has worked mightily to portray this as an effort to curb voter fraud, it is no such thing. There has never — never — been a single documented case of "voter impersonation" at the ballot box, with a fake voter using an electric bill or phone bill to pretend to be a valid voter.

Earlier this month, radio journalist Warren Olney pressed Indiana Secretary of State Todd Rokita about the prosecution of voter impersonation cases in Indiana. "Oh, yeah. We suspect it happens all the time," Rokita said.

"Suspect?" Olney countered.

"Well, are you saying you want to define whether or not there's fraud based on whether or not it's prosecuted?" Rokita answered, adding, "It's a hard type of crime to catch. ... It's hard to catch one in the act."

OK, then. Got that? It's a little like the search for life on other planets. Extra-terrestrials are out there, even if none has actually been spotted.

(If Republicans were interested in actual voter fraud, they would have tightened the rules for absentee ballots, since that's where most voter fraud occurs. But because absentee voters tend to vote Republican, many GOP-dominated legislatures have made absentee balloting rules less stringent.)

But there is evidence aplenty of this: There are thousands of law-abiding registered voters across the land who have no government-sponsored ID — no passport, no driver's license — and who will be banned from the ballot box if the highest court upholds this highly partisan law.

It is difficult for middle-class citizens to believe, I know. If you live in the comfortable economic mainstream, where taking airplane trips and renting DVDs is a routine part of life, you can't imagine voters without a state-sponsored photo ID.

But they're out there. Just ask Mary-Jo Criswell, 71. Her ballot was thrown out when she showed up at her Indiana polling place expecting to use the same forms of ID, including a bank card with a photo, that she had used in the past. She has epilepsy, she says, so she has never had a driver's license.

Citizens like Criswell are Americans, too, and they have every right to vote, just like it says in the Bill of Rights. It is elitism, pure and simple, to suggest that requiring them to obtain a state-sponsored photo ID is a "minor inconvenience." But that's exactly what Justice Anthony Kennedy called it during oral arguments, noting that the law is expected to affect only a small percentage of voters.

That's true. The GOP is aiming at a small pool of voters — mostly poor, often elderly, usually black or brown — who lack driver's licenses. As it happens, they tend to support Democrats. With so many elections decided by a margin of a few hundred votes, Republicans figure they can stay in power by blocking just a few Democratic ballots.

But the Republicans could be in for a jolt. The electorate seems much more excited about Democratic candidates this year. The Democratic presidential candidates have topped the Republicans in fund-raising, and in early primary states, more Democratic ballots have been cast than Republican ones.

The way things are going, Republicans running for national office could lose by a lot of votes — not a few. So they'll need a new scam to win elections.

Governors, Secretary in Drought Talks

ATLANTA -- Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne met with Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue on Friday with the aim of keeping a tri-state fight over waning water supplies amid a severe drought from spilling into court.

Neither the governor nor Kempthorne would say much about the meeting until Kempthorne gets together in the afternoon with Alabama Gov. Bob Riley.

"Out of respect for the way these negotiations are going, we're not going to be very specific," Perdue said. "Things are in the works."

Kempthorne said his meeting with Perdue had "the right atmosphere and the right tone." He stressed that the states need to reach an agreement and keep the federal courts out of it.

Alabama, Georgia and Florida are mired in a decades-long water fight over federal reservoirs, and an exceptional drought -- the worst category, according to the National Drought Mitigation Center -- covering almost a third of the Southeast has intensified the jockeying. Government forecasters reported the drought could soon get worse.

Caught in the middle is the Army Corps of Engineers, which says it is complying with federal guidelines by sending millions of gallons of water from Georgia downstream to Florida and Alabama to supply power plants and protect federally threatened mussel species.

Georgia lawmakers announced plans Thursday for a network of state reservoirs. Perdue also has ordered state agencies and public utilities to reduce usage, and authorities have banned outdoor watering in most of the state.

Georgia also sued the Corps last week, demanding it send less water downstream. That brought objections from the governors of Alabama and Florida.

Riley and Florida Gov. Charlie Crist have warned that Georgia's consumption, especially by the burgeoning Atlanta area, with its population of 5 million, threatens their downstream states.