I couldn't bring myself to vote for a Republican, especially very conservative ones. Later I found out that I could have gone and voted and chosen neither candidate (an under vote). Oh well.
Broun got voted in because Athens-Clarke County voters (the overwhelming majority of whom are moderate and liberal Democrats, Greens and Independents) were so insulted by Whitehead's statements about Athens ("I'd blow up Athens because it's so liberal and only leave the football stadium...").
Our Democratic candidate, James Marlow, came in third place in the special election and only missed the runoff by a 250 votes or so. If he had gotten into the runoff race with Whitehead, Whitehead would have won.
Broun did vote to remove federal laws banning medical marijuana use. However, he did it for states rights and not he right to smoke pot if you're ill (although he should have since he's a family doctor.)
All I have to say that Jim Whitehead, Broun's runoff opponent, would have been a disaster in office. Broun is a very conservative doctor but at least he's not a total idiot like tire salesman Whitehead.
:(
Paul Broun's father (Paul Broun, Sr.) was a 30 year Democratic (albeit a conservative one) state senator from Athens, GA and so Broun had huge name recognition in the district. He also campaigned door to door and must have put out thousands of yeard signs. It was an old fashioned campaign.
edit: A commentary on the special election results by Pete McCommons, publisher of the Athens, GA weekly, The Flagpole:
Political Junk
originally published July 25, 2007
Paul Broun’s 10th Congressional District upset hit political junkies like a load of Oglethorpe County homegrown. This is the stuff that hooks ‘em. It’s like blood to a vampire. Good thing the law of averages usually works, and elections play out predictably. Many more of these shockers, and the whole populace would be howling at the moon and turning all hairy as elections near.
As it is, a lot of ordinary people wonder what’s the fuss. Who cares who gets elected to Congress? Congress is in Washington, DC, we think, and has little to do with rock and roll.
To a junkie, a Congressman is a shaman, a magic figure transformed from an entry-level politico into a superhero wired into the dynamo of the national power grid. A Congressman can “get things done” in Washington, and he or she can jolt matters here at home. A Congressman has been called up from the minor leagues to the majors. A Congressman runs with the big dogs.
That’s why Congressmen and Congresswomen are routinely elected in races that are basically fixed. The big guys—the people with money and political influence who belong to the dominant party—decide who their candidate will be and then they raise the necessary money and hire the staff experienced in running the campaigns and they get their guy elected, and he (usually “he”) is transformed into a Congressman and may face some opposition in the next election, but after that is bullet-proof and is their guy in Congress until it is time to retire him and go through the necessary motions to install the next version.
If you are elected to Congress (which you won’t be), your life is a success. “He was a U.S. Congressman,” assures your place in history, and the generous retirement and health benefits assure comfort for the rest of your life, whatever the length of your tenure in office.
Congressmen are handy in Washington for large corporations, banks, power companies, mining interests, healthcare combines, communications conglomerates and the law firms that work for them. So everybody in those lines of work is eager to help finance the Congressman’s election, knowing that if ever any Washington-related problem should arise, the Congressman will be just as eager to reciprocate.
That’s why all these interests are sure to attend to the orderly succession of Congresspeople, which usually means re-electing them against only token opposition, if any. That’s why political junkies felt a tingling in their veins when Georgia’s 10th District this year suddenly had a Congressman die in office shortly after being elected to a new term. An open seat without an incumbent is almost unheard of, and though the Congressman had been ill, the rapidity of his final decline caught the power brokers off guard. The junkies sensed that this changing of the guard might not be as orderly as usual.
Then the state Republican establishment got down to work. They determined that State Senator Jim Whitehead, from the Augusta suburb of Evans, would be their candidate. No one else who wished to remain in good standing need apply. The best political consultants immediately signed on with Whitehead; the money men started writing their checks; he had the blessing of the former Congressman’s staff and family, and the succession was settled.
The big boys in the state Republican Party had already cut Athens out of the district that elected Democrat John Barrow to get rid of Barrow. He moved to Savannah and won again anyway, but that left Athens plopped down in a heavily conservative rural Republican district dominated by the Augusta suburbs: a political graveyard for Athens and its liberals.
Meanwhile, the machine’s candidate and his handlers self-destructed. In the end, Whitehead proved unelectable, while the former Congressman’s Washington office pushed the professionals aside and ran the Whitehead campaign from DC.
Athens-area physician Paul Broun, just a face in the crowd of nine other unanointed wannabes, doggedly ran an old-fashioned, low-budget campaign of political signs and rubber on the road. He squeezed into the runoff by 200 votes, and then, with a decisive vote in Athens that included many Democrats holding their noses and voting, Broun narrowly won the runoff. Now, the big money guys are hastening to make amends and help the new Congressman pay off his campaign debts, and he is, let us not forget, still a very conservative, very fundamentalist, gun-totin’ Christian Republican.
I’m a junkie, too. Oh, I can go for long periods without it, but when the blood is in the water, I swim with the piranhas. Political junkies are still bouncing off the walls. It couldn’t happen, and it did happen—and Athens, alternately disparaged and ignored by Whitehead and gerrymandered into oblivion by the state Republicans—rose up and turned the tide to defeat the Republican machine. They swallowed Athens, but we stuck in their craw. If that doesn’t turn you on, you’re immune.
Pete McCommons, Editor & Publisher
editor@flagpole.com
http://flagpole.com/News/PubNotes/2007-07-25Another excellent commentary on the election by Tom Crawford:
http://flagpole.com/News/CapitolImpact/2007-07-25Hard Lessons to Learn
originally published July 25, 2007
Every once in a while you have an election that absolutely confounds all the experts. The 10th Congressional District race where Paul Broun edged Jim Whitehead by a few hundred votes was one of those occasions, because nobody saw it coming. It was as shocking as the New York Jets beating the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III - as big a surprise as Sonny Perdue’s upset of Roy Barnes in the 2002 governor’s race. For those who may want to run for political office one day, the 10th District outcome provides all sorts of useful lessons that should be taken to heart.
1. It ain’t over until it’s over.
It’s easy to see why Whitehead and his campaign felt they were invincible. He had the backing of the Republican Party establishment, which convinced heavyweight candidates like state Rep. Barry Fleming and state Sen. Ralph Hudgens to stay out of the race. He raised more than $750,000 in contributions and rolled up a 23-point lead over Broun in the first round of voting.
Given all of those advantages, everyone figured Whitehead would easily defeat someone who had lost three earlier races for Congress and who had to spend more than $200,000 of his own money to keep his campaign going. As Whitehead and his campaign handlers learned, there is no sure thing in politics, especially when you have an opponent who is campaigning as hard as Broun was. The Whitehead team was supremely overconfident and let victory slip away.
2. Don’t insult people unnecessarily.
Whitehead’s campaign went out of its way to insult Athens and Clarke County at every opportunity. “There was a decision made early on to, basically, tell Athens to shove it and ignore them,” said a campaign operative. Whitehead made condescending remarks about the “liberal” environment surrounding Athens and the University of Georgia - and had even joked in the past that he would like to blow up the campus (while sparing the football team). He pointedly skipped a debate in Athens after telling the local press club he would appear. He made a speech in Augusta warning people about the horrible fate that would befall them if someone from Athens should win the congressional seat.
Those were huge mistakes. Athens is a Democratic area where voters normally might have stayed home for a runoff election involving two conservative Republicans like Broun and Whitehead. Democrats were angry at Whitehead for insulting their city, however, so they turned out in heavier than expected numbers on election day. That helped Broun’s cause, especially because his campaign had asked Democrats, politely, for their support.
3. What goes around comes around.
Whitehead was one of 32 Republican state senators who voted in 2005 to adopt a bill that redrew the boundaries of Georgia’s congressional election districts. The redistricting plan had been pushed by the General Assembly’s Republican leadership in an attempt to harm two Democratic congressmen: Jim Marshall of Macon and John Barrow of Athens. The GOP-configured map moved more Republican voters into both of their districts so that they would be ousted when they ran for reelection in 2006. The new maps also took Barrow’s home base of Clarke County out of the 12th District and placed it in the conservative 10th Congressional District. Barrow moved his residence to Savannah so that he would still be situated in the district he represented. The GOP plan failed in the 2006 general elections, because both Marshall and Barrow won close races to retain their House seats.
The effects of that congressional redistricting continued to reverberate in 2007 when Charlie Norwood died and a special election was called to fill his 10th District seat. Clarke County, with all of its Democratic voters, was now part of the 10th District, making it a little less conservative than it had been in years past. Democratic voters in Clarke County, as we discussed above, were irritated about the disparaging remarks Whitehead made about the county in his campaign. They got payback by turning out heavily to vote for Broun in the runoff. Broun received 5,122 votes in Clarke, which was nearly 22 percent of his total vote.
Thus, the redistricting plan that Whitehead voted for in 2005 turned out to be a contributing factor in his defeat two years later. “If Clarke County hadn’t been in that district, Jim Whitehead would be in Congress,” a political analyst noted. It was just another valuable lesson for aspiring politicians to learn.
Tom Crawford
Tom Crawford is the editor of Capitol Impact’s Georgia Report, an Internet news site at www.gareport.com that covers government and politics in Georgia.
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