U.S. Senate

The speculation mill is churning faster that current State Representative & Minority Leader Lynn Westmoreland will be entering the U.S. Senate race to oppose Johnny Isakson. Westmoreland is reportedly doing due diligence to determine how many fundraising commitments he can obtain prior to his desired timing of an announcement at the State GOP Convention in Macon.

Political Reality: If Westmoreland does enter the race, he will have a tremendous uphill climb. Isakson has raised $2 million in a race in which he likely already has 80+% name recognition. In order to realistically compete, Westmoreland will have to raise double whatever Isakson eventually raises for the primary. We estimate Westmoreland has 20% or under name ID throughout the state of Georgia. He would have a higher name ID had he announced during the Session, but there's still plenty of opportunity time-wise to build it were he to embark on such a venture.

Some people believe Isakson's negatives are far higher than what they really are and these folks are trying to use that to convince Westmoreland that he should take the plunge. The fact is, the demographic of the primary Republican voting bloc in this state has changed over the past 10 years and the fanatical one-issue voters do not comprise a majority any longer. One need only examine the 2002 primary races in which the "Ralph Reed candidates" all lost their respective races to figure out this reality.

In his brief congressional career, Isakson has voted and supported legislation like bans on partial-birth abortion and has voted, for the most part, in alignment with mainstream conservative Georgians. While there may be some activists in the state GOP who loudly disagree with that assessment, the fact is that the majority of primary voters are not political activists and they have a more positive impression of Isakson than some of the old-timey stalwarts (with the emphasis on "warts").

We are not in any way picking a side in this race (unless it's just the Republican side), but one thing Westmoreland should really consider before giving-up his position as House Minority Leader to run for Congress: Make sure it is truly your decision, Lynn, and not the silver tongue of Tom Perdue. While Perdue can tussle with Ralph Reed and the White House for who can claim the most credit for Saxby's defeat of Max Cleland, the fact is that when Tom Perdue gets involved in a race due primarily to his own personal reasons, it either blows-up in his candidate's face, or, worse yet, it blows-up in our Republican party's face.

Take, for example, our party's 1996 attempt at taking the Senate seat vacated by Democrat Sam Nunn. Perdue was on Guy Millner's team as the lead consultant and Isakson foe. Millner and Isakson came out of a 6-candidate primary to face-off in the runoff. Millner took the runoff with 52.8% of the vote only to be edged-out by the quite liberal Max Cleland by 30,024 votes. A close race to be sure, but one that Isakson would have had a better chance of winning due to his years in the legislature whereas Millner was merely used as Perdue's foil to jab at Isakson. If you liked living in Georgia between 1996 and 2002 with Max as your Senator, thank Tom Perdue.

Another example of what happens when Tom Perdue gets involved for personal reasons is the 1998 Lt. Governor primary. Perdue sucked $750,000 out of Randy Poynter's campaign only to spend all of his time sending out sleazy faxes against Mitch Skandalakis. Result? Poynter garners a mere 8.9% of the primary vote while Skandalakis and Clint Day graduate to the runoff.

Ever since Johnny Isakson has announced his intention to run for U.S. Senate now, Tom Perdue has spent his leisure time crisscrossing the state looking for a candidate to convince to run against him. Any candidate will do, so long as Tom can work behind the scenes dreaming-up sleazy pieces to throw at Isakson. Bear in mind that the reason(s) Tom despises Johnny are not due in any part to Johnny's legislative career, though Tom has no qualms about dreaming-up some bit of legislative fiction to throw at anyone who he perceives to be on his wavelength to get them nodding. Suffice to say, the real story involves a bank, some misappropriation of funds from this bank, someone who may or may not have been rightly blamed for this misappropriation, someone who was fired from this bank, some possible marital infidelity on the actions of the firee, and something that must be a bit of psychosis on Perdue's part to think that Johnny is personally to blame for his (at the time) misfortune. You know...just your basic good 'ole Southern political soap opera.

So, back to Lynn, our advice is to make sure you're really ready to enter this race because you think you can do the job better than Johnny, and not because Tom Perdue and some other folks who are looking out for THEIR best interest are whispering sweet-nothings in your ear. Because, that's exactly what they are; nothing that is reality, poll or no poll.