Congressional districts in Georgia, like the nation, provided few opportunities for change, especially when Democrats failed to recruit strong challengers in the two districts most competitive in 1996. Although the Second Congressional District in the state's southwest corner has never elected a Republican, it appeared to offer greater opportunities for a challenger than any other district.

U.S. Department of Justice demands had forced major changes in the outlines of the Second District in 1992 when it acquired a 57 percent black majority. The Miller v. Johnson (1995) ruling that districts should not be drawn predominantly on the basis of race resulted in recasting the Second District with a 39 percent black population in 1996. The absence of a black majority emboldened challengers to Democratic incumbent Sanford Bishop who had distinguished himself in two terms as the most conservative member of the Congressional Black Caucus. Bishop faced his most serious opposition in the general election. He secured 54 percent of the vote in a presidential election when black turnout tends to be relatively higher than in off-years and against an opponent who did not have the benefit of a united GOP.

This hint of vulnerability coupled with GOP expectations that 1998 would end 125 years of Democratic control of Georgia's executive branch prompted two Republicans to take on Bishop. Dylan Glenn, a young, black political consultant who attracted an inordinate amount of attention from the national press, was seen by the state GOP as its best hope for making inroads among black voters. His previous political work provided Glenn with a nationwide network of friends who contributed generously to his campaign which raised more than $450,000.

Despite generous funding and heavy television advertising, Glenn confounded expectations outside the district, coming up short with 47 percent of the vote. Joe McCormick, the GOP nominee, operated a small business in Albany, and his wife, a former National Peanut Queen, came from a family with deep roots in the community. Although McCormick had been in the district only four years, he had chaired the local GOP and worked on several campaigns while Glenn had been away from Georgia attending high school and college and working.

In running against Bishop, McCormick continued to articulate the same themes and raise the same issues as he had used against Glenn. The GOP nominee emphasized that among the three, only he owned a business, only he had a spouse, and only he had been a military officer. The issues emphasized by the challenger focused on the driving forces of the district's economic well being: agriculture and the military.

By concentrating on agriculture, McCormick went directly after Bishop's chief basis for maintaining the white support necessary to win. Early on, McCormick created an Agriculture Advisory Board and religiously attended meetings of farm groups across the 31-county district. He challenged Bishop's claim that he had saved the peanut program, so important in this district which leads the nation in peanut production. McCormick charged that the incumbent simply followed the lead of Rep. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) from the adjoining Eighth District. McCormick claimed that his service as an Army Ranger positioned him better to defend the district's military installations, which generate $1 billion annually, against closure.

McCormick sought to learn from the failure of Darrel Ealum who ran against Bishop in 1996 and to overcome the perceived shortcomings of Ealum's campaign. This involved uniting the GOP, raising more money and softening the attack on the incumbent. The GOP nominee reached out to Glenn and was pleased with the support that his vanquished primary foe gave the general election effort. McCormick, who had managed $170,000 in the primary, did well once he had the nomination in hand. Speaker Newt Gingrich, who had hosted a fund-raiser for Glenn, sent out solicitations for McCormick while most other Republicans in Georgia's House delegation helped bring in money. McCormick was one of twenty challengers to receive funds from Steve Largent's (R-OK) New Conservative Leadership Fund. The Albany entrepreneur ultimately had about $500,000, substantially more than Ealum's $329,00. From individuals, McCormick raised $437,000 compared to Bishop's $200,000; in contrast, while McCormick received only $63,000 from PAC's, Bishop had more than $400,000 in PAC contributions as of mid-October.

Finally, McCormick and his general consultant Lou Kitchin, concluded that Ealum's harsh attacks on Bishop backfired.¹ McCormick avoided negativism in his television advertising, and the two ads that ran during the last four weeks of the campaign concentrated on his own strengths. This approach recognized Bishop's popularity as tapped in a poll conducted by the incumbent in April 1998 which showed his favorables exceeding his unfavorables by a margin of 72 to 15 among whites. He had overwhelming support among Democratic identifiers and independents and trailed McCormick among Republicans by only a few points. The challenger acknowledged Bishop's popularity as indicated in McCormick's first mail out, "Sanford is not a bad guy, he is just the wrong guy!" McCormick's efforts seemed to be paying dividends. His late August poll showed Bishop leading by more than 2 to1 but by mid-October, the incumbent's lead had shrunk to 47 to38.

The challenger did not make impeachment an issue but this was one of three districts in which the NRC ran the "rewards ad" that asked whether President Clinton should be rewarded for lying. Campaign consultant Kitchin did not welcome this intrusion and thought about asking that it be taken off the air, but ultimately took no action. Perceived to be of greater help was a generic positive ad that the NRC ran in all five media markets that touch any part of the district. The campaign estimates that the NRC may have spent as much as $250,000 disseminating this message while Bishop had no comparable contribution from the DNCC.

McCormick's analysis of 1994 voting patterns suggested that he needed 60,000 votes to win. He missed that target by only a few hundred votes yet lost by more than 18,000 votes, garnering 43 percent of the vote, a smaller share than obtained by Ealum. In returning to the 106^th Congress, Bishop reassembled the biracial coalition that has been his hallmark. Building on near unanimous support among African Americans, Bishop attracted the votes of about 38 percent of the white electorate, which replicates his 1996 performance (Bullock and Dunn 1997). The key to his larger margin was that blacks constituted an additional three to four percentage points of the voters in 1998.

Neither McCormick nor anyone else anticipated the remarkable black turnout. The challenger arrived at his "victory party" believing he would win although his more experienced staffers had serious doubts after seeing the lines of eager voters at black precincts. Exit polls indicate that statewide, African Americans voted at higher rates than did whites and while that was not replicated in the Second District, white over-representation among voters declined there. Multiple factors promoted black participation. Georgia registration records indicate the race of the voter and the state Democratic party reports that it contacted the household of every black voter five times during the final week of the election. Three of these contacts used the telephone with one of the messages being a recorded admonition from President Clinton urging the listener to go to the polls. One of the mailings played off a threat by the GOP candidate for lieutenant governor that, if elected, he would "kick Atlanta's (bleeped out)." The mailing contained pictures of Guy Millner and Mitch Skandalakis, the GOP nominees for governor and lieutenant governor, separated by a bold-lettered warning: "We're going to kick you ass!" The reverse side contained examples of allegedly racist campaign appeals made by the GOP team and then concluded with the exhortation, "Get to the Polls Before Millner & Skandalakis Get to You." Black radio stations carried ads urging voters to go to the polls, sometimes using inflammatory language such as the assertion that if the Republicans win, "another brother dies, another church burns." In addition to having foes to vote against, black voters also had something to vote for as the Democratic statewide ballot included three African American candidates, two of whom won. Both Democratic and GOP activists report that preachers in black churches made exceptional efforts to mobilize voters.

Even after losing, neither McCormick nor his key staffers blamed the defeat on a lack of resources. They noted that they raised much more than Ealum had, purchased adequate television time, and had a staff of 11 compared with their predecessor's bare bones effort. McCormick felt that he was treated fairly by the press and was pleased with the coverage he earned. Turnout and a united Democratic Party are seen by the losers as the primary causes.

Conclusion

While the factors that undergirded Bishop's re-election may have been unique, his success is part of the near universal result for 1998. The security enjoyed by incumbents extended to African Americans running in districts made whiter following court challenges. Bishop and four others whose districts had been transformed from majority black to white prior to 1996 survived, and legislators in North Carolina and Virginia who faced whiter electorates for the first time in 1998 had no problems. Indeed, all of these candidates won more than 55 percent of the vote. These congressional successes combined with the election of two African Americans statewide in Georgia indicate the continued viability of the Democratic biracial coalition.

Notes

1. Kitchin served in the same capacity with Ealum during his general election campaign.