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ELECTIONS
Sam Nunn

Georgia sees rare competitive races for Senate, governor

Georgia is experiencing seldom-seen competitive races for Senate and governor. Tight campaigns feature bids by Democrats from prominent political families in the state.

Larry Copeland
USA TODAY
Libertarian Amanda Swafford, left, Republican David Perdue and Democrat Michelle Nunn participate in a Senate debate at the Georgia Public Broadcasting studios on Oct. 26, 2014, in Atlanta.

ATLANTA — Georgians are experiencing a rare political phenomenon for this time of year: Just days away from the election, there's not one but two competitive races for statewide office.

The scions of two prominent Georgia Democratic political families are locked in down-to-the-wire battles. One faces a Republican political newcomer for the state's open U.S. Senate seat; the other, the incumbent Republican governor. Many political analysts predict both races will be decided by runoffs.

Usually by this point in statewide elections here, where Republicans hold every statewide office, the only mystery remaining is the size of the GOP victory. But a number of factors — including Democratic candidates with outsize name recognition, demographic shifts in the state, a vulnerable Republican incumbent governor and aggressive campaigns by Democrats — are combining to make this year's election unusual.

"This is very, very different for politics at this stage in Georgia," says Merle Black, political science professor at Emory University.

Libertarian candidates in both races have been pulling enough of the vote in polling to potentially deny either major party candidate a majority.

Prep for the polls: See who is running for president and compare where they stand on key issues in our Voter Guide

The state's Senate race features political newcomer Michelle Nunn, 47, a former CEO of the non-profit Points of Light Foundation whose father, Sam Nunn, was a U.S. senator from 1972-97.She is running against David Perdue, 64, a corporate executive also running for the first time. He is a cousin of former Georgia governor Sonny Perdue.

Nunn and Perdue are vying to replace Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss, who is retiring.

In the governor's race, incumbent Nathan Deal, 72, who has weathered years of allegations of ethics improprieties, is battling two-term state Sen. Jason Carter, 39, a grandson of former president Jimmy Carter who is campaigning on a platform to reform education.

Both races are hard-fought, bitter affairs that bombard Georgians nearly non-stop with increasingly nasty television ads.

Nunn has hammered Perdue over the issue of outsourcing. In 2002, Perdue headed Pillowtex Corp., a North Carolina textile company that he left after nine months with a $1.7 million compensation package; the company was shuttered several months later, idling more than 4,000 workers in the state.

Nunn's television ads have featured former Pillowtex workers stating plaintively that Perdue left them "sitting there holding the bag, with nothing in it." She also has made hay with Perdue's testimony from a 2005 deposition in a case involving Pillowtex in which he said of outsourcing: "Yeah, I spent most of my career doing that."

For his part, Perdue has worked to tie Nunn to President Obama. His ads feature a snippet of Nunn saying, "I defer to the president's judgment ..."; the commercials warn Georgians that she will be "Obama's senator" but not theirs.

Perdue has repeatedly slammed Nunn in debates as an Obama acolyte who would work to advance the agenda of national Democrats such as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader. He also charged Nunn with funding terrorists through her work with the Points of Light Foundation.

The Libertarian candidate is Amanda Swafford, 37, a paralegal and former member of the Flowery Branch, Ga., City Council who helped bring Sunday alcohol sales to the city and voted against government rent subsidies for private businesses.

Libertarian candidate Andrew Hunt, left, GOP Gov. Nathan Deal, center, and Democrat Jason Carter conclude their second debate during the Atlanta Press Club Loudermilk-Young Debate Series at Georgia Public Broadcasting on Oct. 19, 2014, in Atlanta.

In the governor's race, ads for Carter have attacked Deal for everything from his poor handling of a snowstorm that shut down metropolitan Atlanta city last winter to a string of alleged ethical lapses dating to Deal's stint in the U.S. House of Representatives. Deal was cleared of major violations in his 2010 gubernatorial campaign and has denied any other wrongdoing.

Carter has relentlessly criticized the incumbent on education. He walloped Deal for changes he made to the state's popular HOPE scholarship, a lottery-funded program that has allowed thousands of Georgians to attend college; the changes meant thousands of students were no longer eligible and smaller awards for those who did get scholarships. Carter also has accused the governor of cutting billions from education and reducing the number of teachers.

Deal's ads have basically accused Carter of being an empty suit. "He doesn't have a plan," a narrator intones in one of them. The challenger voted against additional funding for education, he wants to expand Obamacare in the state, and he "never passed a bill" in the Legislature, that ad charges, ending with, "Jason Carter wants to take Georgia backwards."

The Libertarian candidate is Andrew Hunt, 53, founder and former CEO of a nanotechnology company who wants to create jobs in Georgia by having the state cover payroll-related taxes for full-time jobs that pay more than $11 an hour.

If neither candidate in either top-of-the-ticket race receives 50% of the vote plus one, there will be runoffs — on Dec. 2 for the governor's race, on Jan. 6 for the Senate race.

Some political analysts say that despite some characteristics unique to the candidates this year, this election is not so much an anomaly as it is a harbinger of Georgia's political future.

African-American voters now make up more than 30% of the Georgia electorate, and the percentage of Hispanic voters is growing; so is the number of younger voters and those who move to Georgia from outside the South, says William Boone, a political science professor at Clark Atlanta University. This comes as the percentage of white voters is dropping.

"I think these races are a precursor to what will be happening in the state of Georgia," Boone says. "They are really kind of telling us what may occur in the future here, the not-too-distant future."

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