Nunn v. tycoon

GEORGIA’S Senate seat may be the only one that Democrats snaffle from the Republicans next week. Since any upset could be enough to prevent a Republican takeover of the Senate, money and endorsements are gushing into the Peach State. The race pits Michelle Nunn, the daughter of Sam, a Democratic ex-senator, against David Perdue, a successful businessman running on the Republican ticket. Georgia is a conservative state, so Mr Perdue ought to win easily, but the polls are dead level.

Ms Nunn (pictured) is a more sure-footed campaigner. She stresses that she can work with both parties: she used to run George H.W. Bush’s “Points of Light” charity. She suggests that there is not much difference between her attitude and Mr Perdue’s when it comes to cutting corporate taxes and supporting small businesses.

At the same time, she attacks his record as a corporate titan. Mr Perdue was the boss of Reebok, a sportswear brand, and of Dollar General, a chain of convenience stores. He was once hired to turn around Pillowtex, a struggling fabric firm that eventually failed. Ms Nunn bashes him for cutting jobs: her advertisements show white women lamenting that Mr Perdue made millions while they were laid off. Democrats were delighted when someone dug up a nine-year-old deposition in which Mr Perdue said that he had “spent most of [his] career” outsourcing. Ms Nunn also chides him for the fact that 2,000 women sued Dollar General for sex discrimination while he was in charge.

Mr Perdue flounders to defend himself. He said he was “proud” of outsourcing—a comment that goes down poorly in a polling booth. He protests that he saved and created thousands of jobs, too; and that those 2,000 women were only a fraction of Dollar General’s workforce of 70,000. But voters are not fond of big bosses this year. Ms Nunn drew applause when she said: “Two thousand women? That actually seems like quite a lot to me.”

For his part, Mr Perdue is trying to make the race about national politics, rather than personalities. He accuses Ms Nunn having been “hand-picked” by Barack Obama and of planning to be a rubber stamp for his agenda, and that of Harry Reid, the current Senate Majority Leader. One ad shows her saying “I defer to the president’s judgment.” Ms Nunn retorts that she has spent “maybe 45 minutes” with Mr Obama in her life, far less than the seven years she spent at Mr Bush’s charity. She ducks the question of whether she would vote to keep Mr Reid in charge of the Senate, and quotes a joke she says a farmer told her: “If David Perdue wants to run against Harry Reid so much, why doesn’t he just move to Nevada?”

Georgia is a big agricultural state, so both candidates say they want to sit on the Senate’s agriculture committee. Both regale listeners with folksy tales of childhoods spent on farms. Mr Perdue recalls “pickin’ watermelons” with his cousin Sonny Perdue (a former governor). Ms Nunn reminisces about nurturing “everything from pecans to peppers to pigs”.

Mr Perdue hopes to ride an anti-Obama wave to victory. More eloquent figures have rushed to his aid: Texan Senator Ted Cruz, a Tea Party pin-up, delighted a Republican crowd with quips like: “Where I come from, gun control means hittin’ what ya aim at” and (of red-state Democrats), “Every single one of them is lying to you.”

Democrats have launched a huge drive in Georgia to sign up unregistered voters, who tend to be young, non-white and to lean left: at least 200,000 since March. However, if no candidate wins an outright majority—quite likely, since a Libertarian candidate is polling at around 4%—the race could go to a run-off on January 6th (see article). Then Georgia will be on everyone’s mind.