Posted on 07/08/2003 10:40:23 PM PDT by LdSentinal
Former Georgia Gov. Roy Barnes (D) is urging Rep. Jim Marshall to run next year for Senate. The race is one of only two open contests, along with Illinois, in the country.
Barnes told the freshman congressman he "should seriously consider" running for the seat being vacated by Democrat Zell Miller.
Despite Marshall's relatively brief stint in Congress, Barnes said the congressman, who won his House seat with narrow 51 percent of the vote, would be a credible Senate candidate.
"I think he's a good candidate," Barnes told The Hill. "He has a good military record, heâs from a great area of the state -- the middle of the state -- and he's successfully been elected to Congress."
For now, Marshall is only contemplating a possible Senate race, his spokesman, Douglas Moore, said. Moore added that Marshall has not set a personal deadline to make a decision.
"Whenever something like this comes along, he thinks you have a responsibility to examine it," Moore said.
Cathy Cox, Georgia's secretary of state and a prominent Georgia Democrat, said Marshall may be "intrigued" and is "certainly exploring" a run. But she cast some doubt on the viability of a Marshall candidacy.
"I don't know whether he is really that interested or whether some of his staffers are pushing him to run," Cox said.
No Democrats have so far entered the Senate race. By contrast, four Republicans have declared their candidacies -- Reps. Mac Collins and Johnny Isakson, pizza entrepreneur Herman Cain and businessman Al Bartell.
Barnes, who lost in an upset to Republican Sonny Perdue last year, said the Democrats' dearth of candidates may stem from party officials' frustration and disappointment with the 2002 election returns.
"People are tired," he said.
Former senator Max Cleland, who also lost last year and is now teaching at American University in Washington, said he's not getting involved in the Senate race. "I'm really out of that business now," he noted
The Democrats' failure to find a strong candidate to mount a bid to hold onto Miller's seat also may reflect a growing sense -- among many Republicans and even some Democrats in Washington -- that the GOP is poised to pick up at least two or three Senate seats in the South next year.
Republicans have high hopes of snagging Democrat Ernest Hollings's seat in South Carolina and John Edwards's in North Carolina.
And talk of Democrats Bob Graham in Florida and John Breaux in Louisiana possibly retiring has further fueled the Republicans' bullish outlook in Dixie.
Underlying these changes are shifting voting habits that strongly favor Republicans.
"Probably a majority of the white vote in the state is pretty well locked into the GOP," Charles Bullock, a University of Georgia political scientist, said.
Republicans carried about 70 percent of the white vote in the statewide 2002 races, Bullock said.
Bullock attributed two Democratic statewide wins to incumbency -- those of Lt. Gov. Mark Taylor and Cox, the secretary of state. More important for longer-term political considerations, he said, two GOP victories over incumbent Democrats in races for the state Public Service Commission show that the GOP is gaining ground.
Cox and Taylor, both of whom had been considered possible Senate candidates, are heading the party's recruiting effort. But neither is running.
State Sen. Mary Squires has come the closest to jumping into the race. But Cox said her inexperience may be a hurdle. Cox also said the first-term state senator may run into problems stemming from a debate about the state flag earlier this year.
In the debate, Squires tearfully called Perdue, the governor, a racist -- first on the floor of the state Senate; then in the governor's office, to his face.
In another sign that Georgia Democrats do not want Squires in the Senate race, Kristie Huller, press secretary for Taylor, the lieutenant governor, said of Squires: "She holds a seat in Gwinnett that is important for her to keep, and hopefully she will recognize that."
Other Democrats who have been mentioned as possible candidates include University of Georgia Athletic Director Vince Dooley, DeKalb County District Attorney J. Tom Morgan, attorney Jim Butler and state Attorney General Thurbert Baker.
Butler, who said he shares Miller's conservative outlook, told The Hill that if he were not to run, it would likely be because he has two children living at home and he is quite happy with his current job.
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