A grass-roots “anti-establishment” message apparently helped Paul Broun Jr. score an upset victory over state Sen. Jim Whitehead in Tuesday’s special-election runoff for the House seat formerly held by Rep. Charlie Norwood, Georgia Republican.
Mr. Whitehead had been heavily favored to win the runoff handily after getting 44 percent of the vote in last month’s nonpartisan 10-candidate special election, in which Mr. Broun, an Athens physician, got 21 percent.
Late tallies yesterday showed Mr. Broun winning the runoff by fewer than 400 votes — less than 1 percent of the total, which would require an automatic recount. Turnout was less than 15 percent of registered voters.
Mr. Whitehead yesterday said that because of the “razor-thin margin,” he would “wait for Georgia’s secretary of state to officially certify” the runoff results “before making further comment.”
In a statement last night, Mr. Broun said he was “deeply honored and appreciative that the majority of voters decided to cast their ballot for me.”
“Yes, the election was close, but close does not mean indecisive,” he said.
Both Mr. Broun and Mr. Whitehead are Republicans who ran as staunch conservatives in the overwhelmingly Republican 10th District, which covers northeast Georgia along the South Carolina border. Three Democratic candidates mustered only 28 percent of the vote in the June 19 special election to fill the seat of Mr. Norwood, who died of cancer in February after serving in the House since 1995.
Mr. Broun won by being “the anti-establishment candidate,” his campaign manager Joshua Evans said in a telephone interview yesterday.
“While [Mr. Broun] is very conservative, he is also very independent,” Mr. Evans said. “We were down significantly, financially, and [Mr. Whitehead] received all of the endorsements from the Republican establishment. … We just focused on taking our message to our voters and implemented a massive grass-roots effort.”
Mr. Broun has called the tenure of former Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld a “disaster,” but supports the war in Iraq, stressing the need to “defeat the Islamic fascists.” Christian conservatives were “an important base” for the Broun campaign, Mr. Evans said.
Geography may have been more important than ideology in a district dominated by two major population centers, Augusta — Georgia’s second-largest city — and Athens, home to the University of Georgia. Mr. Broun is from Athens while Mr. Whitehead is from the Augusta area.
Mr. Whitehead’s “Columbia County base did not turn out the way he expected … and that really hurt him,” said Phil Kent, a veteran Georgia journalist and conservative activist who endorsed Mr. Whitehead.
“Whitehead’s remarks in a recent Augusta civic speech were turned against him to indicate he was anti-Athens, and Broun used that effectively,” said Mr. Kent, adding that Athens-area voters “wanted their hometown boy. They wanted an Athens guy.”
Mr. Broun “very successfully mobilized Democrats and independents in the Athens area,” Mr. Evans said. In addition to getting nearly 90 percent of the vote in Clarke County, which includes Athens, Mr. Broun also tallied 27 percent in Columbia County.
“We were pretty successful at reaching Mr. Whitehead’s home area, because they never expected us to be able to [do so well] in his back yard,” Mr. Evans said.
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