Martin seeks security votes in Georgia

Georgia Democrat Jim Martin, who has crept to within striking distance of Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss in Georgia, is reaching out to military-minded voters in his bid to unseat the incumbent. 

Martin, a former state representative, last week pulled to within two points of Chambliss and on Tuesday appeared at events with former Sen. Max Cleland of Georgia and Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.). Like Martin, both Cleland and Webb are Vietnam veterans.

{mosads}Webb’s presence in Georgia, together with significant spending by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, is also an indication of the hope that national Democratic leaders are putting in a come-from-behind Martin victory. The party is still smarting from Chambliss’s victory over Cleland in 2002, and recently started paying closer attention to Martin’s chances.

Martin attributed his recent uptick in the polls to the economic crisis, saying that Georgia voters are increasingly hungry for change.

“The influence of a strong message with a record behind it, with the economic circumstance of this country, are the reasons we’re doing so well,” he said. “We believe this race is tied.”

The Chambliss campaign touts their candidate’s endorsements by the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the Vets for Freedom, and said Chambliss will be hitting the road on a two-week, statewide bus tour to reach out to Georgia voters.

"Sen. Chambliss always said this would be a tight race and continues to be concerned with only one poll and that is the one taken on Election Day,” said spokeswoman Michelle Hitt Grasso.

A RealClearPolitics poll average puts Chambliss still ahead in the race, but only by 2.8 percentage points, a far cry from leads that exceeded 20 percent in June. Martin, meanwhile, has seen his numbers steadily climb from 33 percent in May to 44 percent last week. Martin won the state’s Democratic primary in July over DeKalb Co. CEO Vernon Jones.

Political scientist Merle Black of Emory University in Atlanta says Martin is indeed benefiting from the economic news, but also from a steady stream of newly registered African-American voters signed up by the campaign of Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama. Out of 406,000 newly registered voters this year, according to the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office, 165,000 are African-American men and women. Overall, black voters comprise nearly 30 percent of the voting electorate in the Peach State, according to state statistics.

However, Black says Chambliss seems to have stopped the bleeding, and remains the odds-on favorite to win the race. Ads being run in the state on Martin’s behalf by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which rolled out new ads last week, also haven’t helped Martin, Black said.

Black added that Chambliss’s other strength is as a debater — it was his superior debating performance that put him over the top against Cleland in 2002, Black said.

“He’s returning fire now,” Black said of Chambliss. “I think this has energized him, because his campaign is now running a lot better than it was a few weeks ago.”
Webb on Tuesday attributed Martin’s steady climb in the polls to the economic crisis, saying it has reminded voters of the unfairness of Republican policies. He was careful to avoid any explicit criticism of Chambliss, with whom he sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

“In general, I think people of this country have really begun to focus on the fact that we are in a very serious crisis both economically and in terms of our foreign relations,” Webb said. “They are looking for people who will come forward with leadership and with answers. That affects a lot of races right now. We’re seeing a tightening of a lot of races.”

Martin said getting help from Webb and Cleland is nothing new because he has been longtime friends with both men, and that Webb in particular has often provided advice and support.

Campaigning with Webb did require some finesse from Martin, especially when criticizing Chambliss’ vote for the Bush administration’s $700 billion Wall Street bailout bill. The problem: Webb voted for the bill too.

Webb said he supported the bailout only after insisting that it include improvements to benefit taxpayers, and Martin said Chambliss deserves blame for the conditions that created its necessity.

“That’s very easy,” Martin said when quizzed about the apparent paradox. “This bailout was necessitated because of eight years of mismanagement of this economy by the Bush administration, with the rubber stamp of Saxby Chambliss. We didn’t just get into this yesterday.”