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Retooled campaign put Chambliss over the top

December 3, 2008 — If ever a campaign needed re-tooling after Nov. 4, it was the one which managed to put Sen. Saxby Chambliss into a runoff on the same night that John McCain was winning the state; the campaign that surrendered 128,000 votes to the Libertarian candidate in the race while McCain gave up only 28,812 to his Libertarian challenger, who also was something of a hometown boy, Bob Barr.

Tuesday night’s runoff showed that somebody re-tooled the Chambliss campaign quite well. Martin conceded around 10 p.m. InsiderAdvantage called the race for Chambliss at 8:11 p.m.

Insiders say a lot of the credit goes to the Georgia senator who wasn’t on the ballot, Johnny Isakson, who often seems to have a keener ear for the political winds than Chambliss. Credit, too, goes to Alec Poitevint, who rolled up his sleeves during the runoff and pushed all the right buttons, the insiders say. And finally, the Perdue whiz kids – Nick Ayers, Derrick Dickey and Paul Bennecke - have their fingerprints all over the four-week operation.

Tom Perdue, the architect of Chambliss’ 2002 victory and a veteran of numerous races, managed the campaign in the general election, and was blamed by some critics for its failure to escape a runoff.

Chambliss was, after all, a man who, at the beginning of the year, was expected to coast to re-election. Democrats had trouble coming up with a “name” candidate to run against him. And the black candidate who had been expected by many to capitalize on the Obama excitement – Vernon Jones – lost in a runoff to mild-mannered, not-terribly-exciting Jim Martin.

Over the next few weeks, the general election campaign seemed perfunctory on both sides. And then, following his bailout vote, Chambliss’s numbers started tanking.

Perdue told Insider a few weeks ago that wasn’t his fault: “Nobody knew that within 36 hours banks were going to start failing around the world, and that’s what happened. And for roughly 10 days, not only our country, but most of the countries in the world, were in free fall. And our campaign momentum came to almost a stop. And that’s when the national Democrats capitalized on it, and that’s when they took control of the Martin campaign,” the strategist said.

Some insiders looked at it differently. Said one: “He (Perdue) had just run a really bad campaign. Chambliss was being told all the time, ‘Where are your ads” and, ‘Your ads suck.’”

Election night on Nov. 4 wasn’t exactly a disaster for Chambliss; he still got nearly 110,000 more votes than Martin. But he needed 9,200 more to avoid the runoff, and hadn’t given hard-core conservatives in his party a reason to look beyond his bailout vote.

Alarmed GOP activists muscled into the campaign at that point. Isakson played a key role in assigning jobs. Poitevint put his energy into the race, and the Perdue whiz kids drafted and implemented the strategic plan.

Part of that plan called for putting Dickey in charge of day-to-day operations.

“Tom had input but he was not calling the shots,” an insider said, “and Tom became a great team player. He opened his arms to the help. By delegating day-to-day operations and creating a broader tent, Tom was in a better position to advise on the macro strategy. Johnny was personally engaged in getting Saxby’s mind right. Alec got things focused and said, ‘This isn’t about anything but winning.’”

If the general election campaign lacked a memorable slogan, circumstances conspired to provide one for the runoff. Chambliss’ handlers quickly moved to depict him as the firewall between a 60-vote filibuster-proof Democratic-run Senate and the American people, and that clearly had some resonance with those Georgians who hadn’t voted for Obama and the change he said he represented.

Indeed, the results Tuesday night might be interpreted as something of a backlash against the new administration, with rural, suburban and exurban voters easily overpowering the votes Martin won in major black counties such as DeKalb, Fulton and Clayton, where turnout no doubt disappointed the Dems.

Clearly, the fear of just such a result factored into Obama’s decision only to cut commercials and robo-calls for Martin and to forego a personal appearance, even as a galaxy of other stars from both parties – John McCain, Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani for Chambliss; Bill Clinton and Al Gore for Martin – made their way to Georgia.

For now, Georgia remains about as red a state as before Nov. 4, when we saw an extraordinary turnout among African-Americans inspired by Obama. The momentum Democrats hoped to regain from this race remains an unfulfilled dream. But hope, no doubt, springs eternal, and many already are looking ahead to the next election two years hence.