Georgia Tipsheet

Conservative tea party activists in Georgia trampled the notion in Tuesday’s partisan contests that theirs was a movement of cycles gone by–a fad, no longer a force–presaging a brutal conservative blitz for capitol dwellers.

Financially outstripped and organizationally outgunned, they squared off with the state’s most prominent Republican politicians and business advocacy groups in a marquee tax referendum and notched majorities in nine of the state’s twelve regions.

At stake for motorists was a controversial transportation fix underwritten by a regional one-cent sales tax, but for the state’s conservative activists it was a deeply symbolic effort: an admonition to the political class that a reprisal performance was merely a rally away.

Campaign disclosures by the two the factions in the ten-county metro Atlanta region revealed a fundraising disparity rarely seen in competitive politics, and rarer still in the context of the measure’s crushing margin.

Fundraising receipts for the primary group supporting the penny tax had topped $8 million at the end of the most recent fundraising quarter, while tea party antagonists reported little more than $15,000 for the same period. Largely subsidized by local blue chips, advocates for the tax had stockpiled north of $1.1 million in cash on hand for voter contact efforts in the contest’s last week.

But in spite of the multi-million dollar fundraising gulf, opposition to proposal measured six in ten voters in the ten-county metro Atlanta region. The margins were even more severe elsewhere in the state, crossing the 75-percent threshold in one mountain district.

The gravity of the conquest, won at the political and personal expense of the state’s Republican governor and lieutenant governor and capital city’s ascendant Democratic mayor, was not lost on tea party organizers.

“We took on the governor, the lieutenant governor, the mayor, big business and slick political consultants,” Debbie Dooley, a co-founder of the Atlanta tea party, crowed at an election night party. “It does show we have absolutely not lost clout.”

That’s a frightening proposition for Peach State pols, a deeply entrenched group thought by most southern political handicappers to be insulated from typical displacement.

In 2010, little less than half of 236 members of the state’s incumbent legislative class went unchallenged. And only eight of that bunch lost their bids.

Yet even as tea party activists had almost exclusively campaigned on the gridlock tax, more than a dozen incumbent state lawmakers were routed by primary challengers on Tuesday. Republican incumbents were especially pinched by the returns, felled by limited government conservatives.

Just as primary challengers swarmed the state capitol for ballot qualifying, the collective war chest of incumbents had nearly reached $9 million by the end of March.

That distinct fundraising advantage and the handicaps inherent in incumbency were barely enough to hold the conservative horde at bay, distracted by the vaulted transportation vote.

Toppling an establishment-boosted campaign of equal financial means this cycle bodes poorly for the electoral hopes of incumbents unfortunate to draw the 2014 short straw.

The implication of Tuesday’s tax romp was unmistakable: deep pockets don’t assure victory. But there could have been no better news for these conservative activists eying a hostile take-over of the state, claiming little more to their name than an abundance of shoe leather.

- James Richardson

The urban-suburban faultline that punctuated the debate over a proposed regional transportation tax was perfectly illustrated in the election party locations chosen by the measure’s two primary opponents.

The Metro Atlanta Chamber and Citizens for Transportation Mobility, the monied business campaign pressing for the gridlock fix, said the pair would watch election night returns at a downtown Atlanta hotel.

Meanwhile the Transportation Leadership Coalition, a shoestring grassroots operation fomenting suburban opposition, would celebrate returns at a quick-service greek restaurant nestled comfortably outside the perimeter of I-285.

- James Richardson

The scene Monday at the state Capitol was one of disparate political theatrics as advocates for and against a proposed transportation tax delivered closing arguments.

One brimming with pols and collateral while another drew supporters and reporters in equally few number.

In their first and last joint presser boosting the measure, the state’s Republican governor and the Democratic mayor of Atlanta stood picture-ready amid a sea of green banners plugging the tax. On either side were two Democratic members of Congress, the lieutenant governor, a dozen state legislators and a host of Chamber of Commerce aides.

The Transportation Leadership Coalition, a group of mostly conservative grassroots activists opposed to the referendum, chased the affair with one of their own. Only with no prominent politician and little more than a dozen sign-wavers.

Pro-TSPLOST campaigners are down in the polls, but sure can swamp anti-taxers in staging a rally. twitter.com/GeorgiaTipshee…

— Georgia Tipsheet (@GeorgiaTipsheet) July 30, 2012

Of course, choreographed press conferences don’t win elections.

The latest survey of metro Atlanta found support for the proposed tax trailing by 9 points ahead of the Tuesday referendum.

- James Richardson

Support for a proposed transportation tax trails by nine points in a new survey released just one day before the measure’s fate will be decided at the polls.

A new survey of the metro Atlanta region, conducted by pollster Mason-Dixon and commissioned by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, clocked opposition to the penny sales tax at 51 percent. Forty-two percent supported the controversial measure, while seven percent were found still undecided.

Of most concern to pro-tax campaigners, already quietly angling for a second referenda authorization act, was the poll’s finding that nine in ten respondents mistrusted the government to honor a sunset pledge. A full 91 percent believed the government would mismanage the program or extend it beyond its fixed expiration.

- James Richardson

A new television advertisement by Citizens for Transportation Mobility is invoking the legacy of former President Ronald Reagan to convince fence-sitting conservatives to support a proposed penny sales tax referendum.

The spot, a final appeal to disaffected conservatives breaking hard against the measure, parlays the late president’s hand in a nearly three-decade-old gasoline tax that facilitated a national wave of transportation projects.

“Ronald Reagan, the greatest conservative leader of our time, believed good transportation creates jobs,” a narrator says. “Today, Metro Atlanta faces a historic opportunity. If we vote ‘yes’ for the transportation referendum, we’ll create jobs and build a stronger economy.”

The Atlanta business community has endeavored for months now to replicate Reagan’s tone and tenor on the tax, but finally yielded to the Gipper himself: “The state of our transportation system affects our commerce, our economy and our future,” he said at the signing of the Surface Transportation Assistance Act of 1983.

A rather shallow attempt to sway undecideds, but one that promises still to surprise a number of Republican primary voters.

- James Richardson

Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed’s boostering of a controversial transportation tax drove him to unfamiliar territory on Wednesday, when the state’s most promising black pol rapped the leader of a local civil rights outfit as an irresponsible liar.

Reed was scheduled for a morning segment on Atlanta radio station V-103 to discuss the merits of the penny sales tax, but instead spoke at length about comments made by the guest who preceded him on air, Dekalb NAACP chief John Evans.

Evans, who just minutes earlier had feigned niceties with the mayor, blasted “certain blacks” as dupes for supporting the tax.

“They think we’re the weakest folk in the game, and so they think they can get away with it. And when can get certain blacks to fold into that thesis, they think they can influence all black folk, everywhere,” Evans said. “First of all, they’re talking about 200,000 jobs. That’s the biggest lie I ever heard.”

“We can’t afford to play this mealy mouth stuff, accepting everything that the system says,” he boomed.

Reed, who has invested considerably personal and political capital in the effort even as support among urban blacks has dipped in recent opinion surveys, was sent into a predictable rage.

“I was listening to that funny fellow you had before I was on. I think he ought to say that to me,” he said. “When I saw him in the hall, all he did was walk up and shake my hand, and ask me how I was doing. If he’s going to get on the radio and make those kinds of false statements, trash talk to the people of Atlanta, he ought do to that while we’re both sitting here on ‘V.’ That’s what a man would do.”

Reed extolled the virtues of the tax–$600 million for investments in the city’s rail system, he said–but not before shredding Evans as a coward.

“This man just got on the radio, said all these false things, used the name of the south DeKalb NAACP, talked about whether I was on the roundtable, talked about this being a rich man’s game,” the mayor said. “How many people has he ever employed? How many businesses has he brought to the city of Atlanta?”

The barnburner ended with an invitation for Evans to debate.

“He talks that because because he doesn’t have any any responsibility,” the visibly irritated Reed told host Ryan Cameron. “He doesn’t have to deliver for people every single day… He doesn’t have to look at them. He runs around, all day, God knows what he does, talking this talk. Come on the radio… Please come on ‘V’ with me.”

- James Richardson

Fundraising receipts for the statewide campaign supporting a proposed one-cent transpo tax revealed on Tuesday the group had raised just over $2 million for its efforts to pass the controversial referendum.

The Georgia Transportation Alliance, the outfit responsible for campaign operations in eleven of the state’s twelve regions, said it had cobbled together $2.1 million and had just at $521,000 to underwrite its final week of voter contact efforts.

But finance reports for the group’s parallel operation in Atlanta, largely subsidized by the state’s biggest businesses, showed it had raised more than triple GTA’s own haul — to convince just ten counties.

Citizens for Transportation Mobility had raised nearly $6.5 million and had more than $1.1 million in cash on hand.

- James Richardson

The collection of Atlanta businesses lobbying for a proposed penny sales tax to facilitate new spending on the capital city’s transportation infrastructure revealed on Tuesday it had more than $1.1 million in cash on hand in the sprint to next week’s marquee referendum.

New disclosures filed this week by Citizens for Transportation Mobility with the state’s campaign finance clearinghouse clocked the group’s fundraising receipts at just under $6.5 million.

Local corporate bigs Georgia Power, Coca-Cola, The Home Depot, SunTrust and Turner all contributed between $250,000 and $100,000 to the effort.

The Transportation Leadership Coalition, a rag-tag group of largely conservative activists opposed to the measure, raised just over $14,000.

- James Richardson

Opponents of the state’s proposed transportation tax protested the controversial measure on Saturday by driving the highway loop encircling Atlanta in vehicles adorned with anti-tax signage.

Organizers of the “Lights for Liberty Drive” estimated between 60 and 70 vehicles participated in the two-hour-long double loop around the capital city, where next week’s regional referendum has pitted conservative business leaders against grass roots activists in a multi-million dollar campaign.

Billy Wise, one of the roving protesters, told Tipsheet on Monday the motorists passing the hazards-flashing convoy were almost uniformly supportive.

“Based solely upon an unscientific assessment of driver reactions, it seemed to be that the anti-TSPLOST observers outnumbered supporters by roughly 6 to 1,” he said. He said there was only one passer-by who expressed a negative reaction to the drive.

- James Richardson

Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed revealed on Tuesday internal polling by pro-transportation tax campaigners that showed the controversial measure narrowly within the margin of error.

Reed, one of the one-cent tax referendum’s most visible boosters, said in a City Hall presser that the July 31 vote would be exceptionally close contest, teasing a new survey that found support for the measure trailing by only 3.

The survey’s margin of error pegged at 3 points, it found 38 percent of voters in the ten-county region encompassing metro Atlanta supported the penny tax while 41 percent opposed it.

Voters in DeKalb and Fulton County lead suburban counties by double digits in support for the tax, largely tracking with earlier independent surveys.

“The public deserves to have the facts, and the facts are this is going to be a close election,” Reed said Tuesday.

But the mayor’s snapshot revealed a substantially tighter bout than numbers from unaligned pollsters.

The latest from the robopolling outfit Rosetta Stone Communications clocked last week a full 56 percent of respondents opposed to the tax, while just 33 supported it.

It wasn’t the first instance in which Rosetta and tax campaigners had produced wildly divergent polls.

Citizens for Transportation Mobility, the collection of metro businesses pressing for the referendum’s passage, previously unveiled internal numbers in May that showed a 15-point margin of support after Rosetta floated days earlier its own survey revealing support for the tax was 3 points under water.

While the integrity of robopolls–automated phone calls that direct respondents to press buttons on their phones to indicate positions–are discounted for methodology, internal surveys are likewise suspect for often painting rosier-than-real portraits.

The only two pollsters reliably in the field, it was apparent one was wrong. It remains unclear who, however.

After CTM released its own numbers in May, pollster David Hill defended the dueling numbers as a consequence of faulty polling science by thrifty robopollsters.

“Our polling used live operators,” Hill wrote in a memorandum circulated to press, “ensuring the integrity of our results and allowing us to ask questions in a more valid fashion than that used by automated ‘robo-polls’ you may see in the news.”

A spokeswoman for CTM did not respond to an immediate request for comment on the group’s latest numbers.

- James Richardson

A new robopoll has found the first time a majority of black Atlanta voters no longer support Georgia’s transportation referendum.

Rosetta Stone Communication’s latest survey of the 10-county metropolitan region clocked 56 percent of respondents opposed to the proposed 1-cent tax, while only 33 percent supported it. Twelve percent remain undecided, down two points from earlier numbers by the same outfit.

While there are no daily tracking polls charting public opinion as the state hurtles towards the July 31 vote, Rosetta has released a trio of polls on the issue that offer the most complete, if still vague, depiction of the state of the contest.

The robopolling outfit’s earliest numbers found the proposed tax within the margin of error, though it’s second survey revealed the measure had slid beyond parity.

Taken in whole, these numbers reveal two fundamental problems for the controversial measure: it’s support is soft and undecideds are breaking against it.

But Citizens for Transportation Mobility, a monied collection of businesses boosting the proposed hike, told Creative Loafing Atlanta that it expects an aggressive get-out-the-vote operation will compensate apparent disadvantages in polling.

“All elections are about turnout and we have a strategic effort underway to broaden the July 31 primary turnout,” an unidentified spox told CL. “We are leaving no stone unturned in our efforts to get out the vote… We are targeting commuters, transit riders and targeted demographic groups that deal with our notorious bottlenecks on a daily basis.”

Until Rosetta’s latest snapshot, urban black voters were among the most reliably supportive. For every 6 in 10 white suburban voters that opposed the measure, 6 in 10 black voters and DeKalb and Fulton Counties supported it, earlier polls found.

Now the support of that group, which most anticipated the pro-tax campaign to aggressively target in last-hour voter contact campaigns, has dipped a full 7 points.

Supporters of the tax initiative have already moved to shore up the tax’s showing with that demo, tapping the likes of Andrew Young for air cover.

The former Atlanta mayor taped a new radio spot–it began cycling through Atlanta airwaves on Friday–cheerleading the tax a “penny wise” investment in the city’s future.

- James Richardson

U.S. Senator Saxby Chambliss corrected on Saturday a Georgia Public Broadcasting report he had endorsed the state’s proposed transportation tax hike while touring the Center for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday in Atlanta.

While touring the CDC’s facilities Friday morning, Chambliss described the proposed 1-cent regional tax as the “best route” to facilitate needed investment in the state’s transportation infrastructure.

“We don’t have the money in the Highway Trust Fund now to build new roads,” Chambliss told a press gaggle. “So, when folks go to the polls, if they don’t have a better idea of how we’re going to fund the transportation needs for Georgia, then this is best route to go right now.

Some, including GPB, took the comments as an endorsement of the controversial referendum.

But the Georgian clarified this weekend that while he intends to vote for the regional tax in his hometown of Moultie, served by the 14-county southwest planning commission, he was not endorsing the measure.

“I personally plan to vote in favor of the TSPLOST in my hometown of Moultie because I believe it will create jobs for southwest Georgia and make a very rural part of the state more attractive for economic development,” he said in a statement. “I think Georgians should make up their own minds and vote their conscience on the T-SPLOST referendum on July 31, based on the facts for their region. That is why I have not and will not endorse T-SPLOST.”

The public news agency adjusted its original hed–”Chambliss endorses T-SPLOST”–over the weekend to a more flexible one indicating only the senator’s support for the July 31 vote.

- James Richardson

Opponents of Georgia’s transportation tax referendum are poised to pursue a legal challenge against the state’s top elections supervisor for an allegedly biased ballot preamble.

Attorneys for the Transportation Leadership Coalition filed on Monday an open records request with Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp to determine if the ballot language was born of muted electioneering.

The preamble as written: “Provides for local transportation projects to create jobs and reduce traffic congestion with citizen oversight.”

TLC attorney Pitts Carr said in a Monday letter that Kemp’s previous explanations–in which the secretary of state defended the language as direct a consequence of the years-old legislation that provided for the referendum–were deficient and was filing a Freedom of Information Act request for more clarity.

Those documents requested include: all correspondence by Kemp regarding the crafting of the preamble; all correspondence to Kemp regarding the crafting of the preamble; and all documentation addressing the legal authority for crafting the language.

- James Richardson

A new survey of residents across the metro Atlanta region has found support for the state’s proposed transportation tax sliding ahead of next month’s referendum.

Only 38 percent of voters in the 10-county region expressed support for the measure, according to new numbers by robopolling outfit Rosetta Stone Communications. Earlier polls by the same group previously found it within the margin of error, tracking a dip of 4 points.

Hostility to the proposal in exurban municipalities–skewing whiter, more conservative than the pair of Atlanta proper counties–is so heightened that it’s pushed the entire region’s opposition to just shy of the majority threshold, at 49 percent.

Still, 14 percent of respondents said they were undecided.

The poll’s methodology not made public, it remains unclear if the survey sampling was of eligible voters, registered voters, or likely voters.

Eligible voters are all those adults 18 years of age or older, while registered voters are those who have registered to vote within their precinct.

But neither of those figures are accurate indicators of the eventual ballot returns: little more than half of the eligible voting population ever participates in presidential elections.

Turn-out for July referenda, then, will be even more depressed.

But an aggressive get-out-the-vote operation in Fulton and DeKalb counties could compensate for diminished suburban returns. Of course, it wouldn’t hurt if the undecideds broke for the measure.

- James Richardson

Martha Zoller’s announcement* she signed a pledge to vote against the state’s looming transportation tax referendum should come as no surprise: a conservative radio talker comfortably removed from Atlanta congestion, the firebrand Congressional hopeful is not the prototypical soccer mom most amenable to the measure.

She has said as much previously. Rather the gesture was a savvy, if transparent, maneuver to transpose on her own race the conservative activist-Republican establishment fault lines developing over the proposed hike.

The fate of both will be determined on July 31.

“State legislators like Doug Collins were hired by voters to address these important transportation issues,” Zoller said in a Wednesday release. “Instead, he voted for HB277 and kicked the can further down the road for someone else to fix it.”

Collins has said he too would vote against the one percent tax scheme, but his green lighting of the legislation that cleared the way for it might complicate his standing in conservative quarters of his party.

Some opposing in principle, others in practice for its appropriation of funds to Atlanta rail transit, Peach State tea party groups, like the one whose pledge Zoller signed this week, have begun upping their protests against the referendum.

Even if largely in agreement, the two GOP’ers could not be more differently styled candidates. The former serves the governor as the top legislative powerbroker in the lower chamber while the latter hosts a regional conservative radio call-in show.

Collins has exploited the dynamic to his advantage, wildly outstripping the field in fundraising receipts, but the Gainesville lawmaker’s cash advantage might prove moot if Zoller can foment conservative exurban tax opposition into a proxy battle.

*Zoller’s announcement email by way of the fine Georgia news aggregator That’s Just Peachy.

- James Richardson