This morning (with 96% of precincts reporting) it looks like Jim Martin and Jim Powell are both headed for runoffs. Most of the votes left to count are mailed in Absentee Ballots, so it's unlikely those will break Saxby's way.
This means The Road to Change Tour will be rolling with the Jims again and we might even get a visit from President Elect Obama! Yea!
Also, congrats to Pat Dooley who scored a clean win against Steve "Thunder" Tumlin and to Bubber Epps who's hanging on by a thread against Allen Freeman. Big thumbs up to all our Dem candidates with opposition who won and to those who put up a good fight. Good job to Chris Huttman who, although he didn't prevail against Jill Chambers, pulled a very respectable 45.3% of the vote. Awesome job Chris.
7 Responses to “Runoffs!”
There will also be a run-off in the Court of Appeals race. So far, looks like Sara Doyle and Michael Sheffield.
All I can say is, WTF?
My biggest state WTF is Earl Giddins in House 34 - apparently Rich Golick is, in fact, invincible. Earl ran a good campaign and was an African American with Obama at the top of the ticket, and he still only managed a percentage point increase over the 2006 candidate who had none of those advantages. Just ridiculous.
Rich Golick was running a RIDICULOUS amount of TV ads. I'm so glad I don't ever have to hear about his Clark Howard award ever again.
Thanks, guys. It is tough to beat an opponent who will just make stuff up about you and spend over $100,000 telling the district whatever she believes she needs to say to win. Also having a primary didn't help, as it was not exactly a Hillary vs Barack positive huggy feely everyone becomes a better candidate affair.
All I can say is hang in there, and I'm very proud of everyone who put their name on the ballot to run this year but particularly Pat Dooley who is one of the most deserving people on the ballot. Thunder only won in 2004 because of the Bush turnout surge so it is fitting to see him go down in the wreckage of the Bush presidency thanks to Barack Obama.
Another wierd thing is the total votes on the Presidential election vs the US Senate Race. In 2004, there were 77847, but in 2008 that number more than doubled to 166055. My mother manages one of the polls in Jonesboro, and she told me durring early voting that a lot of people were voting for President and leaving the rest of the ballot blank. If just 120,000 of those voters also voted for Martin, he would have won, though he'd still have been in a runoff situation.
Another wierd thing is the total votes on the Presidential election vs the US Senate Race. In 2004, there were 77847, but in 2008 that number more than doubled to 166055. My mother manages one of the polls in Jonesboro, and she told me durring early voting that a lot of people were voting for President and leaving the rest of the ballot blank. If just 120,000 of those voters also voted for Martin, he would have won, though he'd still have been in a runoff situation.
Bezerko, I'm not sure that on a whole dropoff hurt one candidate or the other that much in the Senate race statewide. Check out Appling County, 500 fewer votes in the Senate race than in the Presidential race, but Saxby is 750 fewer votes than McCain while Martin is 250 votes more than Obama.