Thursday, Jul 24, 2008
Carrying muddy campaign signs recycled from the South Carolina primary, a ragtag army of McCain volunteers is marching on the Bush stronghold in Georgia.
Mar 6, 2000 | Ask anyone working on the John McCain campaign in Georgia, and they'll tell you that the candidate with the power machine in the Peachtree State is George W. Bush. After all, he has a paid staff at his Atlanta campaign headquarters and new signs for his rallies.
By contrast, it's all volunteers who fill McCain's headquarters, and as for the campaign signs, they're recycled from last month's South Carolina primary. "You'll see that our signs have dirt marks, and that's because they came from South Carolina," says Harry Geisinger, vice chairman for McCain's Georgia campaign. "After Tuesday [when Georgia's GOP primary is held], we will gather them up and they will go to Tennessee or Florida or Mississippi."
"This is a poor man's campaign," said Geisinger. "We'd love for him [McCain] to be here, but money and time won't allow it."
Both the Bush and McCain campaigns are concentrating their time and money on New York and California, of course, where the highest number of Tuesday's delegates are up for grabs, 101 and 162 respectively. In Georgia, 54 delegates are at stake, but neither candidate has chosen to air television ads.
Instead, Bush and McCain volunteers are phone-banking, this time without the negative spillover from other states, they both say. It's been clean campaigning all the way here. After all, this is the land of "yes ma'am" and "no sir," where impoliteness gets you nowhere fast.
But McCain better hope that his volunteers start dripping sugar from their lips if he hopes to pull a coup in Georgia. Bush's daddy carried this state in 1992, Bob Dole did it in 1996, and the polls say George W. will win it this time around.
Still, Southerners do love rebels, and McCain supporters are flocking to their man's cause. In the past month, the number of volunteers signing up for McCain in Georgia has jumped more than tenfold, from 210 to 2,300.
The former POW is also hoping for crossover votes from Georgia Democrats and Independents in the open primary to propel him toward March 14 when six states -- Florida, Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas -- all hold their primaries. "We have seen Bradley supporters who are calling saying they want to volunteer for McCain," says John Sours, McCain's Georgia chairman. "This will be what you see Tuesday."
Few people outside his campaign think McCain has a good chance to win here, however. The senator's attacks last week on evangelist Pat Robertson have left a bitter taste in the mouths of many conservative Georgians.
"McCain just doesn't have a natural kind of constituency among southern Republicans," says Earl Black, a political scientist at Rice University. "Bush is an established country-club Republican and does well among conservative Republicans, the non-religious and the religious Republicans. That just plays good down in the South." Bush's unifying ability among these various segments of the party, says Black, will be what wins Georgia.
Still, if McCain has any chance to pull an upset in Georgia it will be because of the shifting nature of the electorate in and around Atlanta and also here in Savannah -- home of the bestseller "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" -- in coastal Chatham County.
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