Posted on 05/25/2007 1:26:11 PM PDT by Politicalmom
A new poll in Georgia shows Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R) could be vulnerable to a strong Democratic challenger and that his current challenger is closer than many expected him to be.
The poll, conducted by independent Atlanta-based Insider Advantage and released Friday, shows Chambliss edging former Gov. Roy Barnes (D) 42-40. Barnes has not shown interest in the race, but he was used as a baseline sample for a well-known statewide Democrat.
In a second set of results, Chambliss is beating DeKalb County CEO Vernon Jones 48-31. That is significantly closer than the 57-29 result shown by a Strategic Vision poll from early April. Jones has established an exploratory committee for the race and will make an official announcement this summer.
The poll was conducted Tuesday and Wednesday among 500 registered voters in the state. “It doesn’t mean that Chambliss is in serious trouble,” Insider Advantage CEO Matt Towery said. “Although I think it does show that he is a candidate who will have to work to reacquaint himself with the public here. He has very weak name ID.”
The Jones camp hailed the results as proof that he can be competitive with Chambliss. The state has not been high on the Democrats’ target list, as the national party has focused more on states like Texas and Kentucky.
“I have not officially announced at this point and already you’re seeing that the race is closing in,” Jones told The Hill. “Clearly, a lot of it has to do with Saxby not being in touch with Georgians, and the prime example is the immigration issue.”
The poll did not measure anything concerning immigration. Chambliss was recently booed by members of his party while defending the Senate’s immigration bill, which includes a path to citizenship and a guest-worker program.
Jones, who is running as a conservative Democrat, criticized him for his immigration stance this week. Jones favors an enforcement-first approach.
Towery pointed out that Chambliss did not lose many Republican voters but suggested that the 17 percent of independent voters that favored Jones and the 25 percent that favored Barnes might reflect discontent with what is happening in Washington.
Barnes and Jones both garnered 67.9 percent of the black vote, while Jones, who is black, got about 10 percent less of the white vote.
Chambliss’s office did not return a call requesting comment Friday afternoon.
Some Democrats in the state have been recruiting Rep. Jim Marshall (D-Ga.) to run against Chambliss, but Marshall has not shown much interest in the race. The poll did not include a comparison of how Marshall would fare against Chambliss.
Are you saying you worked, donated, supported, then called his regular line, and got no one. When you called the Spanish Language line, somebody picked up the phone?
!!!!!
I didn't call teh spanish language line, but other folks on the Georgia board are saying that. I got through to Chambliss's office last Thursday on the regular line, but people in my office have been trying to call all week and get the "voice mailbox is full" message.
Great is going overboard. He's satisfactory and hasn't destroyed the Republican's chances of keeping the Governor's office.
The greatest threat is from a CONSERVATIVE REPUBLICAN
challenger.
When will these schmucks ever learn.
Screw your base and your base will screw you.
Georgia voters! Reference this poll when calling Sen. Chambliss on the Immigration Bill!!!!
If the “compromise” loses Chambliss, maybe he can peel Isakson with him — and give political cover to someone like Lott to come back to the right side of this issue.
He would be great!
Vopting in a dim ain’t the solution.
LLS
I just called a couple of his offices, and the GOP office, referenced the poll, pointed out that it was BEFORE his recent treasonous behavior, and then cheerfully told them to have a nice weekend. BWAHAHAHA!!
Chambliss is one reason workplace enforcement stopped in 1998.
_____________
Inspections of Vidalia onion fields of Georgia in May 1998 brought a rebuke from then Rep. and now Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), who accused immigration officials of using “bullying tactics” to root out illegal workers. Today, Chambliss is a leader of the get-tough-on-illegal-immigration faction of the Republican party, and argues that the US needs to step up both border and interior enforcement.
http://migration.ucdavis.edu/rmn/more.php?id=1111_0_4_0
Why & When workplace enforcement of illegal aliens stopped
Politicians count on constituent ignorance and poor memory. Anything over a 30 second soundbite gets by most of us. And just because a politician says today that immigration enforcement is important, doesn’t mean he always felt that way.
Workplace raids by INS were frequent until the late 1990’s. A spring 1998 sweep that targeted the Vidalia onion harvest in Georgia, and Operation Vanguard, a 1999 INS operation on meatpacking plants in Nebraska, Iowa and South Dakota, provide case studies of how the immigration laws fared when confronted by a coalition that included low-wage immigrant workers and the industries that hire them.
The Georgia raids netted 4,034 illegal immigrants, prompting other unauthorized workers to stay home.
Instead of being applauded for enforcing the law, the INS came under attack from Georgia’s congressional delegation. Georgia’s two senators and three of its House members, led by then-Sen. Paul Coverdell (R) and Rep. Jack Kingston (R), complained in a letter to Washington that the INS did not understand the needs of America’s farmers. The raids stopped.
Sen. Paul Coverdell condemned the INS for its “military-style” raid “against honest farmers,” calling it “an indiscriminate and inappropriate use of extreme enforcement tactics.”
He then insisted the INS not raid Georgia agricultural fields and crafted a ‘temporary work’ program for the state of Georgia with the INS that allowed undocumented workers to stay ‘legally’ in the U.S. The same has happened in other states like Oregon, and Washington at the insistence of their elected representatives.
Top agency officials issued a memo to field offices nationwide, telling them that they had to give employers 24 hours’ warning before they launched future raids on their workplaces, and demanding that top officials in Washington be notified before any further raids were launched.
Before that incident, the INS had been arresting and deporting almost 1,500 illegal immigrants a month. By 2003 workplace arrests of illegal immigrants for the entire year totaled 445. In 2004, just three businesses nationwide were fined for employing illegal immigrants. In 1999, the United States initiated fines against 417 companies.
The Macon Telegraph described the episode, “ Farmers and immigration officials came to terms on migrant labor issues Friday morning, ending the siege on Georgia’s sweet onion fields. But a storm of criticism from the state’s congressional delegation of the Immigration and Naturalization Service’s action is brewing on the horizon. Eight members of Congress signed an angry letter Friday afternoon to three of the Clinton administration’s top cabinet officers, blasting the INS for its timing”
“The opposition to enforcement was so great that it changed the direction the INS took,” said Gordon Hanson, immigrant expert and economics professor at the University of California-San Diego.
Said Doris Meissner, INS commissioner from 1993 to 2000: “Those things affect an agency’s morale. You go out of your way to make it work, then it comes to nothing. Very demoralizing.”
Operation Vanguard met a similar fate. Nebraska’s members of Congress at first called for tougher enforcement, recalled Mark Reed, then INS director of operations. But when the result shut down some plants, “all hell broke loose,” he said.
Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns (R), who was governor at the time, appointed a task force to oppose the operation. Former governor Ben Nelson (D), now a U.S. senator, was hired as a lobbyist by meatpackers and ranchers. Sen. Chuck Hagel (R) pressured the Justice Department to stop.
Republican Rep. Jack Kingston has since stated “Employers in roofing and poultry and other areas will say, `Immigrants will work longer and harder,’ “ he said. Still, he has moved from being one of the 1998 defenders of the onion growers — “For us, it was just constituent work,” he said — to becoming an outspoken proponent of get-tough immigrant proposals.
Now, he said he believes businesses should be required to verify an employee’s legal status. He also is in favor of harsher penalties for employers who violate immigration laws.
He doesn’t, however, think such sanctions will be part of any new bill.
“The business lobby,” he said, “is too strong.”
Lobbyist and White house guru, Grover Norquist, a force behind the verification weakening, said: “The idea was that our job is to enforce the present rules that don’t work — rather than change the rules.”
Or in Norquist’s case, just do away with any border/immigration enforcement.
By 2000, according to INS figures, the estimated number of illegal immigrants had risen to 7 million, from 3.5 million in 1990.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1836717/posts
Polls may not show it, but anyone who votes for the illegal alien amnesty WILL be vulnerable!! Throw the bums out!!
SittinYonder, do you have any idea what sort of recall provision the state of Georgia has, and does it specifically omit United States Senators?
The reason I ask, is that I’ve found a ruling from Wisconsin, in 1979, directing the Wisconsin State Board of Elections to proceed with a recall election in the event a petition is presented, and only to cease at the direction of a court of law. I’m hoping to identify states who make provision for recall elections that are vague enough, or do not specifically preclude, the recall of United States Congressmen.
Had people realized that Herman Cain was the true conservative we would’nt be calling our senators offices raising hell about their position on this amnesty.Old boy network is still alive in Georgia.It needs to be put to bed in 08 starting with chambliss.
I'm looking. I used to use the OCGA on the legislature's website all the time, and I tried looking this up ... they've changed it to some Lexis/Nexis engine and either I can't figure out how to work it, or they only give you a description of the contents of a code section and not the actual code section.
I'm about fed up ... with the old OCGA I'd've had your answer 10 minutes ago.
I think the code section in question, in case I can't figure out how to get it, is 21-4-4.
21-4-4.
(a) Every public official who holds elective office, either by election or by appointment, is subject to recall from office by electors who are registered and qualified to vote in the recall election and who reside in the electoral district from which candidates are elected to that office: (1) In the case of a state officer whose electoral district encompasses the entire state, the number of electors necessary to petition the recall of the officer shall be equal to at least 15 percent of the number of electors who were registered and qualified to vote at the last preceding election for any candidate offering for the office held by the officer. At least one-fifteenth of the number of electors necessary to petition the recall of the officer must reside in each of the United States congressional districts in the state as said congressional districts may now or hereafter exist; or (2) In the case of a state officer whose electoral district encompasses only a part of the state or in the case of a local officer, the number of electors necessary to petition the recall of the officer shall be equal to at least 30 percent of the number of electors registered and qualified to vote at the last preceding election for any candidate offering for the office held by the officer. (b) No recall petition shall demand the recall of more than one public official. (c) Every public official who holds elective office, either by election or by appointment, is subject to recall on the grounds that such public official has, while holding any public office, conducted himself or herself in a manner which relates to and adversely affects the administration of his or her current office and adversely affects the rights and interests of the public if one or more additional grounds for recall exist as set forth in subparagraph (B) of paragraph (7) of Code Section 21-4-3.
I'm not reading this as precluding the recall election of United States Senators by the citizens of the state of Georgia. What's your read on this, SittinYonder?
OK ... I ain’t a lawyer so don’t go to court on this, but the way it looks to me is that the recall in Georgia is only for state officials. Article I, Sec. 5, clause 2 of the U.S. Constitution appears to provide the mechanisms for removing U.S. Congressmen and U.S. Senators.
“Each House may determine the rules of its proceedings, punish its members for disorderly behavior, and, with the concurrence of two thirds, expel a member.”
Based on this, I think it is not possible to recall a U.S. Congressman or U.S. Senator. I have knowledge of recalls on state and local levels, but I’ve never heard of any recall of a congressman or senator on the national level in the history of the country.
I’m pinging to this post someone who knows much more than I do, and perhaps she can answer your question more accurately.
As stated above, I read this to preclude U.S. Congressmen and U.S. Senators.
There may be something in the law somewhere that I am missing, but this statute very clearly only allows for removal of state officers.
Well, what got me going was that 1979 ruling in Wisconsin. There never has been a recall of a US Senator, ever. The Constitution does not make allowance for recall, but it sounds to me as if a case could be made and heard. Hence the question to you about Georgia. There is no provision for state level recalls in North Carolina, or I’d be looking to get one going for Richard Burr.
Herman Cain or Lynn Westmoreland.
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