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Obama Plays a Part in Contests in Georgia
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| Contributor | ArmyDem |
| Last Edited | ArmyDem Jul 15, 2008 11:30pm |
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| Category | News |
| Media | Newspaper - New York Times |
| News Date | Thursday, July 17, 2008 05:00:00 AM UTC0:0 |
| Description | By SHAILA DEWAN
Published: July 16, 2008
ATLANTA — Vernon Jones, a black Democrat who voted for George W. Bush twice and then used Senator Barack Obama’s image on his campaign literature, led a crowded field on Tuesday in a primary race to challenge Senator Saxby Chambliss, a Republican.
Mr. Jones, who is leaving his post as chief executive officer of Georgia’s second-largest county, DeKalb, headed for a runoff with Jim Martin, a white former state lawmaker. Unofficial returns with 91 percent of the precincts counted showed Mr. Jones with 40 percent of the vote to Mr. Martin’s 35 percent, in a field of five candidates.
Mr. Obama’s candidacy also played a role in another race, in which Representative John Lewis, the civil rights leader, faced challengers for the first time since 1992.
Mr. Lewis, a Democrat, initially endorsed Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, then changed his mind after Mr. Obama won the Georgia primary by more than 30 percentage points.
Mr. Lewis’s opponents, State Representative Mable Thomas and Markel Hutchins, a pastor and community activist, tried to portray Mr. Lewis as out of touch with today’s voters. But Mr. Lewis won handily, with 68 percent of the vote.
To political analysts, that was not a surprise. But there was much more uncertainty over how well Mr. Jones would do and, should he win, what effect his candidacy would have. Some have argued that Mr. Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, would pull votes into Mr. Jones’s column, while others have predicted that Mr. Jones, whose tenure in DeKalb County has been marred by controversy, would hurt Mr. Obama, drawing white voters to the polls to oppose him. |
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