Roy Eugene Barnes set the right tone for his announcement that he’ll try to regain the governor’s job from which he was booted in 2002 by Georgia voters: conciliatory, somewhat apologetic, at least giving the appearance that he sort of understands why he and his sidekick Bobby Kahn pissed off so many people back then.
He allowed as to how he “didn’t do enough listening” when he was
governor (especially to the folks who tried to tell him that the
situation was looking bad for him in rural Georgia during that fateful
campaign). Part of the reason was, as his mother used to tell him, “I
was the hardest-headed kid God put on the face of the Earth.”
“I realize I was impatient and I had an aggressive agenda,” Barnes said
at his Wednesday announcement in Marietta. “I didn’t take time to
explain why I thought certain issues were important or time-sensitive
and critical to make a Georgia that could be instead of a Georgia that
was.”
The words are true enough – Barnes’ challenge over the next 12 months
will be to persuade the voters that he really understands them and sees
the error of his ways. Bill Clinton was able to do that in Arkansas
after losing the governorship and Barnes hopes to do the same thing
here (which would make him the first governor since his namesake,
Eugene Talmadge, to come back and win the governorship after being
ousted).
Although Barnes will probably be able to out-raise his competition and
win the Democratic primary, Georgia is a much more Republican state
than it was when he was elected governor in 1998.
Some may want to cite the results of last November’s general election
as a good omen for Democrats, when a record turnout of black voters
helped Barack Obama run a competitive race against John McCain for
Georgia’s electoral votes and enabled Jim Martin to push Republican
Sen. Saxby Chambliss into a runoff.
The turnout in 2008 (3.9 million total voters) was during a
presidential year, however. Voter turnout always drops off markedly in
non-presidential years. The turnout in the 2010 general election will
probably be much closer to the 2.1 million voters who cast ballots in
the December runoff last year – a smaller slice of the electorate where
the Republican vote tends to be heavier. By way of comparison,
Chambliss led Martin by about 109,000 votes in the general election,
but expanded that winning margin to more than 318,000 votes in the Dec.
2 runoff. Those numbers should give pause to any Democrat who plans to
run for statewide office.
Barnes has the ability to make it a competitive governor’s race, but
the Republican nominee (whoever that is) would still have to be considered to
have an edge, for the moment anyway
Back to Barnes’ announcement on Wednesday: Bobby Kahn was nowhere to
be seen, but former Barnes aide Chris Carpenter was there. That lends
some credence to speculation that Carpenter will be running this
campaign, or at least serving as the public face for it.
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