Sen. Barack Obama may be our President Elect but election season isn’t over quite yet. A Dec. 2 runoff is being held in the sate of Georgia because neither incumbent Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R) nor challenger Jim Martin (D) obtained the majority required under state law in the Nov. 4 election.
Yesterday Sen. John Ensign (R- Nev), and Sen. Chambliss held a conference call to briefly update the media on the status of the campaign and take questions.
Chambliss said that his campaign feels “very good about the fact that [we] beat Jim Martin by 115,000 votes, and obviously assuming that we get those folks back to the polls on December the 2nd or beginning next week with the early voting then we are going to be fine.”
He did stress that they were raising money quickly but were a long way from having the resources they need match the Democrats “They have spent a lot of money in this race already and we know they are going to spend a lot in these remaining three weeks”
Chambliss talked about the portion of his constituency were upset with him over the “rescue package vote” (aka the Wall Street bailout) and “with early voting” Chambliss said “a lot of them went out when their emotions were high and frankly didn’t vote for the Democrat but voted for the Libertarian.”
“We’ve had dozens and dozens of those folks call up and say ‘we had no idea what was going to happen, would happen, and we are not only changing our vote to you, but encouraging all our friends.”
Chambliss when asked about a possible endorsement by the Libertarian candidate Allen Buckley said “We have had some contact with Mr. Buckley’s campaign but at this point they won’t say whether we will have his endorsement or not. Endorsements are important but they don’t win or lose races, we would love to have his endorsement but I cant say right now if we will or not.”
Sen. Ensign reminded those on the call the importance of the outcome of Chambliss’ race to Republicans and conservatives: “Saxby and this race may very well end up being the firewall against our 60 vote super majority that the Democrats are trying to achieve to break any kind of filibuster and if that happens there will be no check and balance against the liberals in Washington DC.”
Already the National Republican Senatorial Committee is running a television ad in which they remind voters of what Ensign warned of.
Watch the ad here:
