Even in deep-red states, GOP feels the heat
Democrats see chance to pick up many seats in Senate, House
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MARIETTA, Ga. - Natalie Price didn't bother voting in 2004. The 28-year-old home health nurse "wasn't too interested" in that election, she said with a shrug as she emerged from
Not so this year. She smiles when she talks about Barack Obama, who she believes is strong, smart and well-spoken, and whom she would love to see make history as the first black president. She is "most definitely" going to the polls - and when she does, she'll also support the rest of the Democrats down the ballot, she said, even though she has not been paying much attention to them.
Voters like Price are worrying the incumbent US senator from Georgia, Saxby Chambliss, one of four Republican senators from deeply conservative states who in the last several weeks have been unpleasantly surprised to find their jobs in jeopardy. Disgust with the Bush administration and concerns about the economy, along with huge enthusiasm for Obama among young people and African-Americans, have put as many as 11 Republican-held Senate seats into play.
Democrats, with two friendly independents, control 51 seats but are striving for at least 60, in theory a filibuster-proof majority. The Cook Political Report, which tracks congressional races nationally, estimates Democrats could pick up 7 to 9 Senate seats and as many as 23 to 28 seats in the House.
Across the country, some prominent Republican senators are fighting for their political lives: Elizabeth Dole in North Carolina, Mitch McConnell in Kentucky, and John E. Sununu in New Hampshire. Democrats are also gaining against Republican incumbents in Minnesota and Mississippi; they are almost certain to pick up the open seat in Virginia, and are running strong in races for open seats in New Mexico and Colorado. If Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska is found guilty of corruption, his seat will almost surely go blue.
In Georgia, a state that President Bush won by 17 percentage points in 2004, Chambliss held such a comfortable lead at first that he did not even bother airing television commercials until a few weeks ago. But polls now show Democrat Jim Martin within the margin of error. And a strong Democratic get-out-the-vote effort, driven by an Obama organization that boasts 53 paid staff and some 5,000 volunteers, is pushing up turnout as never before. Voter registration rose 12 percent between December 2007 and September, and in heavily Democratic Atlanta this week, people waited in lines for an hour and a half to cast their votes early.
"I just think there is a strong, anti-government sentiment this year," said James Brown, a Republican from the tiny country town of Eatonton in east central Georgia, where Chambliss's campaign bus stopped one morning this week.
The race features a pair of candidates who were fraternity brothers, though not close friends, at Georgia State University in Atlanta in the 1960s. Chambliss, a lawyer, served in Congress before beating incumbent Senator Max Cleland, a Vietnam veteran and triple-amputee, in a 2002 race that attracted national attention when Chambliss called Cleland soft on national security. At his bus tour stop in Eatonton, he carried himself with ease, exchanging placid "glad to see you's" with adoring constituents.
"People know his name, and he's a mainstay in Georgia," said Stephanie Coleman, a Republican in her mid-30s from Roswell, outside of Atlanta, as she relaxed with friends over dinner the other night.
Martin, a thin, bespectacled workhorse from Atlanta who volunteered to serve in Vietnam, served in the state Legislature for 18 years and as the state's human resources chief before running unsuccessfully for lieutenant governor in 2006. Understated and a bit more reserved than Chambliss, he chatted quietly with veterans and union members after a press conference this week. His office is in the basement of a downtown Atlanta building, a windowless space with an unfinished ceiling and a fan that whirs so loudly press conferences can't be held there.
"He's been concerned about poor folks, disabled people, health care," said Khadijah Muhammad, 69, a retired educator, as she stood in line to vote for him early the other day.
Complicating the picture for Chambliss is Allen Buckley, a Libertarian candidate who is likely to sap votes from him, and who could force a run-off if neither he nor Martin wins a majority on Nov. 4.
Chambliss's problems, political observers say, are not only about the national anti-Republican tide. He also alienated his conservative base by initially supporting the immigration reform package pushed by Republican presidential nominee John McCain and Democrat Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, said Merle Black, a political scientist at Emory University.
"That created a firestorm," he said. "He was booed at the Republican state convention."
Chambliss was also hurt badly by his support for the recent $700 billion financial bailout bill, which was extremely unpopular in Georgia, said Charles Bullock, a political science professor at the University of Georgia.
"You can begin to see Chambliss's lead evaporate at about that point," he said. "It's the failing economy as well as dissatisfaction with that vote."
In the meantime, Martin raised enough money to run television ads, which helped him introduce himself while Chambliss's popularity was deteriorating - and he had unimpeded access to the airwaves, noted Bullock, since Chambliss ignored Martin for so long.
Martin's rising poll numbers have helped him attract national attention. Money from liberal web-based groups has begun flowing in, and Democrat Jim Webb of Virginia, former Secretary of the Navy and a leader of conservative Democrats in the Senate, traveled to Atlanta this week to attest to Martin's credentials.
"This is a part of the country that understands full well what it means to serve," Webb told reporters as he stood alongside Martin at a Vietnam veterans memorial near the State House.
But it is the Obama campaign that has changed the ground game for Martin. Though Obama recently stopped advertising on TV, he still has a huge army of volunteers talking about Martin in phone calls and dropping campaign brochures with both Obama's and Martin's pictures.
Jennifer Duffy, a senior editor for the Cook Political Report, noted that 163,000 new African American voters have registered in the state since Jan. 1, and that black voters, who make up 29 percent of the electorate, represent 36 percent of those who have turned out to vote early.
McCain, meanwhile, has no ground organization, and though the state GOP has in the past mounted extensive get-out-the-vote efforts on Election Day, some Republicans are concerned. Polls show Obama within single digits.
Some Republicans, fed up with the GOP's handling of the Iraq war and the economy, have gone so far as to pitch in and help Obama, like Cynthia Flood, a 53-year-old photographer and former lifelong Republican who lives near Jesup.
"We're totally losing the middle class in this country, and that is very disturbing to me," she said.
But in interviews with about two dozen voters this week, most said they knew little about the Senate candidates; if anything, they said they were turned off by the increasingly negative tone of the TV ads both were airing.
"I think they've been slinging a lot of mud at each other," said Alice Williams, 62, on her lunch break the other day. "You don't know who all you can trust." But she said she is a Republican, so she will stick with her party.
Correction: Because of a reporting error, a Page 1 story on Oct. 24 about US Senate races misstated where Georgia candidates Saxby Chambliss and Jim Martin were fraternity brothers together. They attended the University of Georgia in Athens.
