Dems in GOP strongholds get Obama boost

Tom Curry National affairs writer • Profile • E-mail

ATLANTA - Sen. Barack Obama has created such enthusiasm among African-American voters in this year’s election that his place on the ballot may help elect Democratic senators in states that the presidential candidate himself seems unlikely to win.

In states such as Georgia and Mississippi, which Obama, the first black nominee of a major party ticket, is unlikely to carry, higher turnout by African-American voters could help the Democrats deliver a big Senate majority — and perhaps even a filibuster-proof majority of 60.

In a fundraising e-mail with the simple subject line “60,” former President Bill Clinton urged donors to give Democrats “a filibuster-proof majority to overcome a Republican Senate caucus that is now the most obstructionist legislative body in America's 232-year history.”

Clinton’s reading of history may have been skewed, but his appeal for 60 is on point here in Georgia, where the former president stopped over the weekend to do a fund-raiser for Democrat Jim Martin, who is challenging Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss.

Georgia permits pre-election day voting and according to Georgia's secretary of state, 35 percent of the 967,000 early votes have been cast by African-Americans.

As in the Mississippi Senate race, the higher the percentage of African-Americans in the electorate, the better the Democrats’ chances of winning the Senate seat here in Georgia. In the 2004 presidential race, African-Americans accounted for 25 percent of the Georgia electorate.

Strategists say that split ticket voting means that Obama could lose Georgia, but Martin could win his race.

Erik S. Lesser / AP Democratic Senate hopeful Jim Martin

“There are more McCain-Martin voters than there are Obama-Chambliss voters,” said one Georgia Democratic strategist.

An appeal for GOP turnout
Meanwhile, Chambliss and his aides seem to be worried that some Republican voters might not show up on Election Day.

"It’s so important that we have turnout,” Chambliss told about 80 Republican loyalists Friday at the courthouse in Fayette County, a GOP stronghold south of Atlanta. “The other folks are turning out — in record numbers,” he said.

The specter of Obama allied with a filibuster-proof Senate majority is beginning to motivate Republicans.

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In a warm-up speech for Chambliss at the Fayette County courthouse, conservative Republican Rep. Lynn Westmoreland told the crowd, “If the Democrats get to 60 in the Senate, we’re going to be in real deep trouble, because the Senate has been our backstop for some of the shenanigans of (House Speaker Nancy) Pelosi.”

Even Martin is wary of the Democrats' 60-seat goal. He wants to be thought of as moderate who would reach across party lines.

Democrats should “only use the 60-vote Democratic majority — if that’s what we have — very seldomly and only on those fundamental issues where we need to do something to move this country forward,” he cautioned in an interview. “The less often that has to happen, the better for the country.”

The trend in Cobb County
The Martin-Chambliss battle will likely be decided in the ring of counties around Atlanta.

An increase in black turnout in Cobb County, west and north of the city, will make Obama and Martin more competitive statewide. Twenty-three percent of the county's population is black.

Cobb County Democratic Party chairman David Wilkerson noted this weekend that nearly as many voters turned out in Cobb County for the Democratic presidential primary as for the Republican primary.

Northern Cobb was the bastion of Newt Gingrich when he served in the House ten years ago. The county “has significantly changed” since the Gingrich era, Wilkerson said, partly due to in-migration from other states and from Atlanta. “I think Newt would have a very tough time” in Cobb County today.

In the 2004 presidential race in Cobb County, Bush won 173,000 votes to John Kerry’s 103,000. Democratic strategists see Obama winning at least 130,000 in Cobb County this year.

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