Businessman and Prattville City Council member Clyde Chambliss was just 19 votes short of winning the crowded Senate District 30 Republican primary outright. But when all the votes were counted on June 3rd, he came in just shy of the 50 percent threshold needed to avoid a runoff. He was followed by Harris Garner of Millbrook, who came in a distant second at 32 percent.
Shortly after the primary, there was a lot of chatter that Garner would concede the race to Chambliss and not burden taxpayers with funding a runoff whose outcome seemed to be a foregone conclusion. But Alabama law stipulates that if no candidate reaches 50 percent, the top two candidates will proceed to a runoff, so Garner was perfectly within his right to push forward — and that’s exactly what he did.
The same night that votes were being tallied in Alabama Senate District 30, Mississippians were waiting with bated breath to hear the results of a contentious U.S. Senate primary that pitted longtime Republican incumbent Thad Cochran against Tea Party upstart Chris McDaniel.
McDaniel edged out Cochran 49.5-49.0, but like Alabama’s SD30 race, neither candidate reached the magic number 50.
What happened next in Mississippi will go down in Republican political lore as one of the most dastardly — or savvy, depending on your perspective — runoff campaign tactics in memory.
The Cochran campaign, realizing they were in serious trouble, began openly recruiting traditionally Democratic voting blocs to crossover and vote for Cochran in the Republican primary. It reeked of desperation, but shockingly, it worked. When Cochran got his second shot at McDaniel in the runoff on June 24th, he won 51-49.
So what does this have to do with this Alabama senate race?
It looks like the Garner campaign may be employing some of the same tactics.
First of all, Alabama Education Association (AEA)-allied political consultants have been running Garner’s campaign from the beginning. As Yellowhammer has mentioned numerous times, the AEA is our state’s de facto Democratic Party, but realizing Democrats are going the way of the dodo bird in Alabama, they jumped full force into Republican primaries in 2014.
We detailed their tactics in this 90-second video titled “How Obama organizers are trying to hijack Alabama’s Republican primary.”
But here’s where the similarities between the Cochran campaign and the Garner campaign get particularly interesting.
In the SD30 primary, there were 51 absentee ballots cast in Elmore County, Garner’s home county, only a handful from addresses located in what would be considered traditionally Democratic voting areas. That comes out to 0.89% of the total votes cast in the primary.
But as of Thursday, 171 absentee ballots had been requested in Elmore County for the runoff, many of them from traditionally Democratic areas, and a large chunk of them listing “illness” as the reason they will not be able to come vote at the polls on election day. If the turnout is around the level that is expected on Tuesday, that will equal roughly 12 percent of the total vote in Elmore! None of the other counties in the District have seen this change.
In short, there is already evidence of a significant spike in Democratic voters in Garner’s home county suddenly taking a huge interest in voting in the Republican primary. And somebody might should call the Center for Disease Control because a lot of them are so “sick” they already know they won’t be able to get out of the house to vote next Tuesday.
The numbers listed above may seem small, but when turnout is expected to be around 5 percent, a hundred votes here or there could easily swing a state legislative race.
Garner has a lot more ground to make up than Cochran did in Mississippi, but it will be worth watching to see if he manages to close the gap with the help of what appears to be a newfound Democratic base of support.
Follow Cliff on Twitter @Cliff_Sims
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