Good to be the incumbent
Third District Congressman Chuck Fleischmann, R-Chattanooga, elected to his third term in the United States House of Representatives on Tuesday, had raised more than 10 times that of his Democratic opponent, Mary Headrick, according to the candidates' Oct. 15 Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings.
That's not surprising, considering he's the incumbent, but the challenger's vote came a good deal cheaper.
Considering only the Oct. 15 numbers, Fleischmann raised $1,488,636, eclipsing the $1,412,229 he raised in the entire 2012 cycle, and spent $15.30 per vote for his 97,319 votes, while Headrick raised $117,841 and laid out $2.18 for her 53,963 votes.
For people who won't earn in their lifetime what the incumbent raised, those figures are staggering, but they're slightly less than the average price of winning or being re-elected to the U.S. House in 2012, which was $1,689,580, according to an analysis by MapLight.org compiled from FEC data.
In 2012, FEC records showed individuals, both large and small givers, were responsible for 60 percent of Fleischmann's fundraising, political action committees 40 percent and everything else less than 1 percent. This year, through Oct. 15, individual giving fell to 55 percent of his fundraising total and PACs rose to 45 percent.
Two years ago, Headrick, like the incumbent, got 60 percent of her contributions from individual givers but 35 percent from self-financing and 5 percent from political action committees. This year, individual contributions skyrocketed to 90 percent of her intake, while party committee contributions totaled 7 percent, self-financing 3 percent and political action committees less than 1 percent.
Spinning the unspinnable
State party chairpersons are expected to make chicken salad from chicken scratchings when their parties take a beating in elections, but the Tennessee and Georgia Democratic chairmen and strategists may have stretched the limits of people's imaginations with their takes on Tuesday's election.
"Tennessee Democrats held our ground," said outgoing party Chairman Roy Herron, who added that the party spent more than $250,000, "far more than what was spent two years ago."
In fact, for all that extra spending, Democrats lost a seat in the state Senate and one in the state House, though Republicans actually picked up an extra seat in the House when Kent Williams, who listed his affiliation as Carter County Republican, chose not to run. In addition, Democrats couldn't field a "name" candidate for governor, and their United States Senate candidate lost by 30 percentage points.
But, Herron pointed out brightly, two Democratic legislators "increased their margins" of victory.
In Georgia, state party chairman DuBose Porter said he saw hope in U.S. Senate candidate Michelle Nunn's ability to cut into heavily GOP counties. In fact, while U.S. Sen.-elect David Perdue didn't do as well as Republicans might have wanted in the Atlanta media market, he outperformed 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney in nine of the state's 10 media markets.
Republicans now hold every statewide office there, and neither Nunn nor Democrat gubernatorial candidate Jason Carter could exceed the 45 percent of the vote President Obama got in the state in 2012.
However, Georgia Democratic strategist Tharon Johnson subscribed to the if-you-say-it-then-it's-so school of spinning.
"[The election] left Democrats with a lot of hope for the future," he said. "This is no longer a state they can say is solid red."
Franklin was, is, right man
Former Chattanooga City Commissioner John Franklin was a perfect honoree for the Chattanooga History Center's ninth annual History Makers Award Wednesday.
The first black elected to that body, the predecessor to today's City Council, he served for 20 years as commissioner of education and also was the first black president of the Tennessee Board of Education.
When he was elected to the at-large commissioner's post in 1971, the South was less than 10 years from the end of the discriminatory Jim Crow laws. Not just any black man, frankly, could have been elected. But Franklin, a school principal and funeral home owner, was courtly, soft-spoken and patient. He knew strides for blacks in the city needed to -- and would be -- made, and he used his political capital where he could to advocate for them.
It would be another seven years years before another black man was elected to a local governmental body, and by the time one was elected, the way had been paved by the Chattanooga History Center honoree for slightly more confrontational leadership from candidates in a city becoming more diverse.
After leaving the commission, Franklin returned to work at the 120-year-old funeral home, where his father was the city's first black funeral director and embalmer, and where his son and daughter join him in the business today. And the fact that both black and white Chattanoogans call on the funeral home for business is no small testimony to the trailblazer's kind and cooperative mien.