Shipp: Martin can't be nice guy in race for U.S. Senate

[Raffi Ella]

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The well-funded Chambliss is clearly the favorite, but he has made some missteps that give Martin a real shot, if the Democrat uses them.

A recent example is an incident that only can be described as insensitive and strange. Chambliss showed up at a hearing held by a Senate subcommittee of which he is not a member to aggressively attack a whistleblower testifying about the safety problems at the Imperial Sugar plant in Savannah, where a February dust explosion killed 13 people.

When you add Chambliss' willingness to carry the water for the sugar industry against his own constituents to his support for a wildly unpopular bill that would have provided a way for illegal immigrants to become citizens, you get the picture of a guy more interested in protecting the agribusinesses that fund his political career than the people who sent him to Washington.

Maybe that's because the senator's world seems filled with lobbyists, from Chief of Staff Charlie Harman, who came through the revolving door straight from his lobbying job for the insurance industry, to Chambliss' son, Bo, who just happened to find himself a lobbying gig when Dad went to Congress.

Martin has a chance to define Chambliss as the archetype of what Americans don't like about our nation's capital, and in a year of change, that might give him the chance to pull off an upset.

That will only happen, however, if nice guy Martin decides he'll take the fight to Chambliss.





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