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Even George Jones goes negative as mud flies in GOP primaries

July 10, 2008 — What with Democratic voter registration teams crawling all over the region and the GOP brand in the tank, one might think Republicans this year would be especially mindful of Ronald Reagan’s 11^th Commandment: Speak no ill of another Republican.

If anything, however, there’s been more negativity and mudslinging than usual in Republican congressional primary contests this year, and the trend has already worked to the benefit of the Democrats.

In the Louisiana 6^th District special election, former Richard Baker aide Paul Sawyer put the spotlight on fellow Republican Woody Jenkins’ business problems, as well as indirectly paying avowed racist David Duke for a mailing list Jenkins used in a 1996 Senate campaign. Sawyer failed to make it into a runoff, but Jenkins, who was a polarizing figure in the party anyway, never got his campaign off the ground and lost the special election to Democrat Don Cazayoux.

A fractious primary played an even bigger role in the Republican loss in the Mississippi 2^nd District special election. Former Tupelo mayor and TVA commissioner Glenn McCullough ran an ad claiming his opponent, Southhaven Mayor Greg Davis, wasn’t really conservative. Davis fired back with an ad charging McCullough with padding his expense while on the TVA board.

Davis won the primary runoff with a big turnout from his base in the Memphis suburbs. But like his Republican primary opponent, the Democrat he faced in the special election last May, Travis Childers, was from Tupelo. The race quickly became a regional battle between the Memphis ‘burbs and the hill country, and Republicans suffered one of their most embarrassing defeats this year.

For all the bad blood in that primary, however, the Republican runoff for Alabama’s 2^nd District, which will be decided next Tuesday, could be breaking new ground. The race in that southeastern Alabama district has gotten so heated that U.S. Rep. Terry Everett, who’s retiring from the seat, issued a statement this week calling on the runoff opponents, State Sen. Harri Anne Smith of Slocomb and State Rep. Jay Love of Montgomery, to cool it.

Both candidates have pulled their negative ads, but there’s a side feud between Love and country music park entrepreneur Ronny Gilley. He claims Love misrepresented his dealings with Smith, who withdrew her opposition to an electronic bingo pavilion planned as a part of Country Crossing, the $300 million entertainment park he’s building south of Dothan.

Gilley enlisted a future resident of the district, country music great George Jones, to record a radio spot in which he says Love “is just a plain old liar.”

This race also has the potential to become regionalized to the Republican’s disadvantage. The Democratic nominee is Montgomery Mayor Bobby Bright, who potentially could benefit if this becomes a “Montgomery vs. Dothan” more than a Democrat vs. Republican race.

All this name-calling in Republican primaries has a lot to do with the current psychology of the GOP, said Kerwin Swint, a professor of political science at Kennesaw State University who has made a specialty of negative campaigning.

“There really isn’t much to pull them together right now, and so they focus on their difference,” Swint said. “The more personal issues sometimes become more important than the ideology of the party or what they’re trying to accomplish together.”

George Jones has recorded quite a few songs on that subject, come to think of it.