Fresh Loaf

You’d think that by this point in the U.S. Senate Runoff race between incumbent Republican Saxby Chambliss and Democratic nominee Jim Martin all the issues would be hashed out. But that’s not the case.

On Sunday, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee released an ad that questions why Chambliss has refused to testify about whether executives from Imperial Sugar — they owned the Savannah refinery that exploded in February and killed 14 people — asked him to help the company avoid blame for the incident. Chambliss has received campaign contributions from Imperial Sugar and browbeat a company whistleblower during legislative testimony.

A Chambliss spokeswoman told the Associated Press that U.S. Senate legal counsel told the incumbent Republican the U.S. Constitution prevents him from testifying.

But government watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington says the senator has it wrong. And in a post on the group’s website, executive director Melanie Sloan delivers the senator a zinger.

(more…)

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U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss now holds only a three point lead over Democratic nominee Jim Martin, a new poll commissioned by the Mellman Group finds. The poll of 600 likely voters conducted Sept. 24-28 shows Chambliss with a 37-34 lead over the former state lawmaker. Libertarian nominee Allen Buckley received three percent.

From the Martin campaign:

The new numbers show that Chambliss is more vulnerable than ever, despite a month’s worth of television ads from his campaign. Only 27% of Georgia voters now think that Chambliss is doing a “good” or “excellent” job in the Senate, down from 37% in a previous Mellman Group poll in August.

“Saxby Chambliss has been on TV since late August, but it’s clear now that the voters aren’t buying what he’s selling,” Martin campaign manager Ellery Gould said. “Maybe that’s because he’s been telling Georgians that ‘the American Dream is more possible today than ever before.’ Meanwhile, the middle class is struggling and we’re getting stuck with one last bill for the failures of Bush/Saxby Economics: a $700 billion bailout because of the deregulation of Wall Street that Chambliss supported in Washington.”

It should be noted that this poll was commissioned by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. But anytime an incumbent is under 40 percent in the polls, that’s cause for concern. A mid-September Rasmussen poll found Chambliss maintained a seven-point lead over Martin for two consecutive months.

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