Fresh Loaf

Don’t count on Georgia’s candidates for Congressional and state offices to tell you what they think on the issues.

That’s what Project Vote Smart, a national research organization founded by Newt Gingrich, Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford and numerous other political leaders of all parties, concluded in its regular survey of the bunch.

According to the organization, only 30 percent of Georgia’s Congressional candidates and 13 percent of state legislative candidates were willing to give their views on such issues as budget, taxes, environment and energy, health care, immigration and foreign policy. (Keep reading to find out who’s among them.)

A 10-year study conducted by the organization shows candidates and incumbents have been less likely to respond to the test.  Why are those who want to remain in office or get there so apprehensive? Says Project Vote Smart:

Since 2000, Project Vote Smart has found that party leaders and consultants from both major parties are advising candidates not to respond to the Test for two primary reasons: it will limit the candidates’ ability to control their campaign messages, and it will expose them to opposition research.

Richard Kimball, president of Project Vote Smart responds to this cynical attitude. “While Project Vote Smart doesn’t need the candidates’ cooperation to get the goods on them, the public is always interested in finding out which of their candidates have enough courage to expose themselves to their opponents in order to help voters. One campaign consultant told us, ‘Our campaign only answers issue questions if they come with a campaign contribution or endorsement.’”

After the jump, view the names of and download the attachments to see where your elected official stands.

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At last week’s Political Party talk show, state Sen. Sam Zamarripa, one of the General Assembly’s few Hispanic members, reiterated one of the many nuggets of conventional wisdom that emerged during this election year: Immigration was used as a wedge issue.

But the issue sort of fizzled in the home stretch of this year’s midterm elections.

Now, congressional Democrats are expected to pass their own version of comprehensive immigration reform during the first half of 2007. And even though Republicans won most of Georgia’s statewide races, Democratic incumbent congressmen won two key downstate contests in which Republicans tried to pin them with the soft-on-immigration label.

Even more significantly, the Hispanic vote may have provided the edge in those two races. In both Georgia’s 8th and 12th congressional districts, the margins between the incumbents and their Republican challengers were far smaller than are the numbers of registered Hispanic voters in those districts.

There are 9,505 registered Hispanic voters in District 8 and 6,426 in District 12. Rep. Jim Marshall beat Mac Collins in District 8 by 1,750 votes, and Rep. John Barrow beat Max Burns by 930 votes (the Barrow numbers may change in a recount, but he’s currently the presumed victor).

It couldn’t have hurt Marshall and Barrow that advocacy groups such as the Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials led voter-registration drives within the Hispanic community and mobilized voters in cities such as Augusta, Savannah and Macon, which include parts of the two districts.

Do the two Democrats owe their re-elections — at least in part — to Hispanic voters? And was this an early sign of the emerging Latin vote in Georgia?

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