Cover Story: Party animal

Georgians like the word conservative.

Compassionate conservative. Reagan conservative. Common sense conservative. It doesn’t much matter.

Since 1980, no word in the political lexicon has been more overused. Candidates wave it as a talisman, as if voters will find its mere utterance hypnotic.

But with its constant invocation, radio airwaves to county-fair megaphones, the word has lost much of its meaning.

Case in point: Georgia’s Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate says he’s conservative. But the question for voters in November is: What does conservative mean to Saxby Chambliss, a Moultrie attorney who has represented deep South Georgia in Congress for four terms?

Is he conservative like, say, Sam Nunn, or like Jesse Helms? Is he conservative like Zell Miller? Or Newt Gingrich? Or, for that matter, Augusto Pinochet? In other words, how far right does Saxby Chambliss go?

He says his campaign is about taking his “common sense conservatism” from the House of Representatives to the Senate.

But would a torrent of votes to expand the federal power over our personal lives be applauded by traditionally conservative proponents of limited government?

Is it common sense to vote against just about every major piece of environmental legislation presented to Congress in the last eight years when children in your state’s largest metropolitan area are being told they can’t play outside because the air pollution is so bad?

Does voting against including birth control pills in health insurance plans exemplify down-home logic when you also stridently oppose abortion rights?

And if you side with your party almost without exception, is that reflective of the deep thinking and political independence Georgians should expect from a representative who wants a job in the country’s most deliberative and powerful legislative body?

On one key issue, abortion, critics charge that Chambliss adopted the most radical position in order to win approval from a “conservative” group — and then retreated to a less zealous position in an effort to pick up more moderate votes in November.

It seems fair to ask, then: Is Saxby Chambliss a real “conservative”? Or does his agenda put him outside the mainstream for most Georgians?

Party loyalist

The GOP, eager to snap up what it considers a vulnerable Senate seat and return a Republican majority, has pushed a version of Chambliss that doesn’t completely jibe with the guy doing the voting in Washington.

“In four terms as a congressman, Saxby’s become one of the most respected members of the House — thoughtful, principled and always willing to work with colleagues to find bipartisan solutions to the country’s problems,” Vice President Dick Cheney has said of Chambliss.

Consider, though, where Chambliss has been for the last eight years: in what may be the most far-right House of Representatives in a generation. It’s a place where Chambliss doesn’t often have to work for a bi-partisan solution. In the case of the passage of the controversial USA PATRIOT Act, he actually worked against one. Moreover, since 1997, the non-partisan Congressional Quarterly lists Chambliss’ party unity ranking — meaning the percentage of times he votes with his party — at 94 percent. While that might endear Chambliss to GOP bosses, it hardly suggests senatorial independence.

Civil liberties, environmental and labor groups all flunk Chambliss’ voting record during his eight years in the House. Truth is, they flunk most Republicans. But take a closer look. According to these groups, Chambliss’ record singles him out even among the Bob Barrs and John Linders of Georgia’s congressional delegation.

Of course, Chambliss scoffs at those interest group boxscores. The difference of a few percentage points between himself and, say, John Linder on an ACLU scorecard doesn’t mean he’s the Angel of Death to Linder’s Mother Teresa. And he’s right.

But those few percentage points — 31 to 6 in the 106th Congress, for example — do suggest that Linder is capable of moderation and that, after all, is where 44 percent of this state’s voters land in the ideological spectrum — as moderates.

Start with the bills and amendments highlighted by the American Civil Liberties Union. Granted, many Georgians might disagree with the group on a host of issues, but the ACLU does monitor just how big our government would like to get. Since Republicans took control of Georgia’s House delegation in 1995, Chambliss has earned the lowest marks from the ACLU during every session of Congress save one. During the 105th Congress, Rep. Nathan Deal, R-9th, scores lower, because he voted for campaign finance reform, which the ACLU opposed on First Amendment grounds.

While Chambliss may have a strong record of voting against intrusive taxes, he doesn’t favor limiting other forms of government authority. In the 106th Congress, for instance, he voted against a reasonable reform bill that requires law enforcement to prove with clear evidence that a citizen’s property is subject to forfeiture before the government takes it. The bill was hardly “liberal” legislation — it was introduced by GOP stalwart Henry Hyde, R-Ill., and it passed by an overwhelming majority. Chambliss provided one of just 48 votes against it.

During that same Congress, Chambliss also voted against a banking amendment introduced by Bob Barr that would have helped get financial institutions out of the practice of spying on their customers under so-called Know Your Customer laws. Meanwhile, he gave the thumbs down to a measure that would have prevented the federal government from enforcing penalties on people who broke the anachronistic ban on travel to Cuba. The Cuba amendment cleared the House, 232-186, and received the support of Linder, among other conservatives.

The only positive mark that Chambliss received from the ACLU during his entire time in office was for voting against campaign finance reform. He didn’t think the bill did enough to rein in the influence of unions, and “it didn’t allow for full participation for people who are interested in politics.” That’s an oddly populist sentiment for someone whose campaign received, as of its July 31 disclosure, at least $51,500 from Big Tobacco and thousands more from corporate giants such as the Southern Co. and Northrop Grumman.

A not so green thumb

On the environment, Chambliss nearly matches his civil liberties record. Many Georgian business execs would be just fine if Chambliss sided with corporate interests more often than with greenies. But, according to those who follow environmental votes most closely, the congressman’s record is dead last in the Georgia delegation, a group not exactly known for its Earth consciousness.

It’s noteworthy that pollution in metro Atlanta has for some time ceased being a strictly political consideration and moved firmly into the realm of health and economic development. Last summer, there were seven days in which the state advised parents to keep their children indoors because the air was too dangerous for them to breathe. Meanwhile, a report peer-reviewed by a professor at the Harvard University School of Public Health from Clean the Air, due to be released in October, found that in Georgia, more than 1,600 lives are cut short by pollution from coal-fired power plants each year. The American Lung Association currently ranks Georgia’s air as the sixth worst in the nation for ozone pollution. And in the late 1990s, Atlanta’s air got so bad that the federal government stopped sending the metro area road money — and a second moratorium may be around the corner.

If the smog isn’t bad enough, most parts of the state face a growing water supply crisis, which has been exacerbated by rapid development, interstate disputes and very little conservation.

But up on Capitol Hill in 2000, Chambliss voted for an amendment that sought to delay tougher smog standards, and in 1998, he voted against removing language from an EPA appropriations bill that would have delayed requiring older power plants to, among other things, reduce mercury emissions. (The Georgia Environmental Protection Division warned residents about eating 45 different species of fish in more than 80 rivers and streams this year because they contained high levels of mercury.)

Chambliss also voted against an amendment that would have removed language from an appropriations bill that made it impossible for the EPA to strengthen its standards for arsenic in drinking water. Meanwhile, he sought to open up the Arctic Wildlife Refuge, the Great Lakes and the coast of Florida, which even the Bush administration eventually opposed, for oil drilling.

In addressing Chambliss’ abysmal rating by the League of Conservation Voters and his inclusion in the League’s so-called Dirty Dozen, a list of Congress’ worst environmental offenders, Chambliss’ campaign does not mention the votes. Instead, his aides attack the league as a partisan organization that received money from one of the right’s favorite punching bags — Jane Fonda.

Without getting into specifics, Chambliss argues he’s searching for “balance” on environmental issues.

“I have a very positive record on the environment,” he says. “I want my children and grandchildren to breathe clean air. I want my children and grandchildren to have an abundant supply of safe water. I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure that happens.”

Chambliss’ idea is that there need to be “reasonable” rules to protect the environment; the obvious implication is that the votes highlighted by the League of Conservation Voters aren’t reasonable. But Chambliss consistently rates below the average of the business- interests-first House, including a 0 score in 2001.

“My idea was that we need to continue to work through this and let’s find that delicate balance that will give us reasonable regulations from a clean air standpoint ...” Chambliss argues. “When it comes to those issues, I’ve been very much out front on it, and I’ve voted consistently for what I think is in the best interests for my constituents.”

Allison Kelly, the coordinator for the Georgia Environmental Enforcement Project, isn’t buying Chambliss’ explanation.

“It’s clear from Georgia EPD’s own data that we are not maintaining anything close to a balance here in Georgia where air and water quality are concerned,” Kelly writes in an e-mail statement. “I can’t imagine how anyone could argue that voting against less arsenic in our drinking water, or against cleaner tailpipes, is part of that job.”

Voting for a Democratic turnout

While Chambliss’ votes on civil liberties issues may seem alien to many Georgians’ concept of conservative, especially Libertarians, and his record on the environment is arguably extreme, he’s also supplied votes that should get the Democratic voting base buzzing.

He has consistently sided with the most conservative wing of his party on anti-gay initiatives including an amendment to block the District of Columbia from offering domestic partner benefits and from permitting unmarried couples to adopt foster children. Both amendments were defeated.

Another measure Chambliss favored would have forbidden public colleges and universities from using affirmative action as a basis for admission even when the institution was trying to right past wrongs. It too was defeated by a bipartisan coalition.

Chambliss also sought to exclude birth control pills in federal health insurance plans. In fact, when it comes to the abortion issue, Chambliss has a spotless anti-choice record, including votes for the so-called Global Gag Rule and against allowing even privately funded abortions on U.S. military bases. The Gag Rule denies U.S. aid to foreign non- governmental organizations that use their own money to so much as discuss the option of abortion. And those organizations are the ones usually responsible for contraceptive and family planning services in overpopulated and undereducated countries. An attempt to overturn the law failed despite the support of moderately conservative Republicans such as Johnny Isakson of Marietta.

Chambliss’ record, however, finds its applause where you think it might. He scores well among conservative organizations such as the American Conservative Union. He earned a 91 rating in 2000 and a perfect rating in 2001 for voting for capital gains tax cuts, school vouchers and amendments such as a proposal that would have increased Bush’s tax cut by nearly a trillion dollars and cut non-military spending by $440 billion. That measure failed 341-81.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce also rates the congressman with pro-business scores that range between 80-94 percent from 1997-2000.

High scores from the American Conservative Union, though, belie the fact that Chambliss has been smart enough to part company with his party when it was important for constituents in his district. Unlike Bob Barr, who most often seemed to be led around by principle alone, Chambliss has shown a pragmatic streak that has helped keep him in office and has gotten him in trouble on the campaign trail.

The label game

With just one month to go before the Nov. 5 election, the Atlanta media hasn’t bothered to take a look at what Chambliss has been doing in Congress. Save for AJC columnist Martha Ezzard’s untangling last month of Chambliss’ flip flop on abortion, no one has really even examined his campaign.

Instead, the media has been content to follow the script floated by Chambliss’ camp: His opponent, Sen. Max Cleland, is a tax- and-spend liberal and a Washington nobody.

In a state where the Democratic governor is trying to associate himself with President Bush, the word “liberal” is the obvious political boogyman. In Cleland’s record during his first term, Republicans do have some ammunition for this not-so-inventive attack. For example, Cleland voted against Attorney General John Ashcroft’s nomination, an amendment to speed the elimination of the so-called marriage penalty and another offered by Jesse Helms that would have withheld money from public schools that bar the Boy Scouts from using their facilities.

But Cleland, much to the chagrin of some Democrats, just isn’t much of a liberal. His record, as a whole, places him in the middle.

Every year, the non-partisan National Journal puts together rankings, based on a series of votes, of our congressional representatives and places them in a liberal-conservative spectrum in social, economic and foreign policy categories.

The equation works out the way you think it would. Ted Kennedy, for example, rated an 88 liberal score for the 2000 Senate. That same year, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, whom Republicans have repeatedly tried to tie to Cleland as an ideological soulmate, picked up an 81.2 score.

In its 2000 scorecard, though, Cleland is singled out for his bi-partisanship. He earns a 57 rating — more conservative than Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., and just slightly lower than the Senate’s most conservative Democrat, Herb Kohl of Wisconsin. Cleland’s composite score for 2001 again placed him in the middle with a score of about 60.

So how does that compare to other Democrats elected statewide? It’s certainly higher than Zell Miller, who voted more conservatively on economic issues than did Republican John McCain. But Miller is a strange case.

Maybe most tellingly, in Sam Nunn’s final year in the Senate, the prototypical (defense-happy and tax-shy) Georgia Democrat rated nearly the same as Cleland with a 55.7 liberal score.

As for Chambliss’ National Journal rankings, they’re not as extreme as one might expect given his voting record on women’s issues, civil liberties and the environment and his party loyalty.

While the rankings put Chambliss in the conservative wing of the House, he consistently scores below Barr and Rep. Jack Kingston of Savannah.

And that may indeed say something about Chambliss’ savvy. In 1995, for example, in a likely nod to his comparatively poor district, Chambliss joined 106 representatives in signing a letter to then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich to cap a proposed tax cut for families at $95,000 instead of $200,000. That same year, he tangled with House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, over a Big Gummint peanut program that was important to his district’s farmers but opposed by his party’s free market wing.

There is, however, another side to Chambliss’ political survival skills.

Oops. He did it again.

Certainly, Chambliss is not someone to be underestimated. He first ran for Congress in 1992 against incumbent Democrat Roy Rowland, and lost. But Chambliss never stopped campaigning or raising money. In 1994, Rowland retired from Congress just before qualifying, and that left Chambliss as the sole contender with a campaign war chest. Chambliss far outspent Democrat Craig Mathis and won 63 percent of the vote.

But Chambliss gained an enemy in that race because his campaign used an aggressive telephone campaigning method called “push polling,” in which the pollsters effectively campaigned against Mathis. A story from the AJC at the time references the controversy but doesn’t say what the Florida polling firm told 8th District voters. Mathis claims it was untruly suggesting to respondents that he had been busted for marijuana.

Chambliss’ campaign’s response at the time was reminiscent of the attack it has waged against the League of Conservation Voters. Meaning, it didn’t address the action.

“Rather than whining about campaign tactics, let’s talk about the issues,” said then-campaign manager Rob Leeburn.

“I have no respect for him,” a still bitter Mathis says of Chambliss. “He’s the kind of man who will not let anything stand in his way.”

In this year’s GOP primary election, the heavily favored Chambliss’ aggressive campaign methods soured relations with his opponent, Bob Irvin. Before the Aug. 20 vote, Chambliss signed four separate questionnaires that confirmed his position was in line with Georgia Right to Life’s: Abortion is acceptable only to save the life of the mother. Rape and incest are not reason enough to abort a fetus. It was a new position for GRTL, which claims 215,000 households as members. And the one-reason stance is extreme even among conservatives. But Chambliss needed the group’s support in the primary, where the ideologically pure rule the day. He even circulated a mailing that touted his support by National Right to Life, GRTL’s parent organization.

After the primary, his campaign claimed that he had always taken the three-exception position on the abortion issue. The four questionnaires were a mere slip-up.

Irvin says the group even called him to confirm his position because it was an ideo logical change. Nancy Stith, the executive director of GRTL, says that Chambliss wasn’t called.

“Our understanding was that Saxby had always been for one exception,” Stith says.

What likely happened is that with the primary over, Chambliss’ campaign decided to slide back toward the center to capture moderate Republican votes and hope that hard liners wouldn’t dare vote for Cleland.

“A person can certainly change his position on this issue as on others ... but to claim that he didn’t take a position that he obviously did take three months ago is simply not honest,” Irvin told CL. “If Mr. Chambliss or anyone else has been playing games with an issue as important as this, it is outrageous. I say that not because it might have had an effect on the primary, though it certainly might have, but for a much simpler reason: Politicians should be straight with people, period.”

While the abortion flip-flop may leave a bruise on Chambliss’ reputation, it’s not his most embarrassing moment this campaign season. At a meeting in Valdosta in November he told the audience that the way to improve homeland security was to “just turn the sheriff loose and let him arrest every Muslim that comes across the state line.”

In early April, Chambliss spoke to Savannah Area Republican Women and came up with this bon mot: “I know — your husbands are the ones who write all the checks, and y’all do all the work.”

In each case, Chambliss says he was joking, but the jokes seem more suited to a barroom blustering among good ol’ boys than the statesmanlike discourse of a senator. Such jokes may pass in a conservative, rural South Georgia district, but they come off as harsh and unsophisticated in the diverse metro area.

“Atlanta has incredible problems and opportunities that come with being a large city, and I wonder how he’s going to deal with being a senator that has such a large base of the population that’s very cosmopolitan,” says Chris Grant, a government professor at Georgia College and State University in Milledgeville, who also closely follows state politics.

“In a lot of ways, Saxby is a country lawyer, and there’s nothing wrong with being a country lawyer, but in some ways he hearkens back to a day and time in Georgia politics that may not be the current Georgia politics.”

Image vs. reality

Chambliss has a reputation for being courtly and something of a Southern gentleman. And people often say he looks senatorial.

But if Chambliss possesses a reserve of charisma, he didn’t tap into it in conversation or with a large group of supporters gathered at his Buckhead headquarters on a recent Sunday afternoon. His answers to CL’s questions were narrowly partisan, and they didn’t have the sort of erudition one would expect from someone who had actually wrestled with a complicated subject.

For instance, Chambliss entered the political world with the Republican Revolution of 1994. He was part of an energetic group of freshmen who intended to change the very nature of government. In eight years, Chambliss has gone from voting to shrink the bureaucracy to voting for huge appropriations bills. He’s very much a part of the system.

When asked to talk about an issue on which his thinking has changed over his near-decade in Washington, though, Chambliss can’t come up with much.

“I don’t know if you’d call it a change in position, but in ‘94 when I ran, the flat tax was the direction which I thought we’d ought to go in respect to revising the income tax code,” Chambliss says. “I have moved more now toward a national sales tax position.”

Whoa.

In fairness to Chambliss, CL didn’t ask him much about his favorite subject — homeland security. But the answer to how much responsibility America should shoulder to rebuild a post-Saddam Iraq, merited just a few sentences. And those sentences didn’t reveal any deep thought about the problems that the region will surely face if a leaderless, devastated country with deep religious divisions and vast natural resources is suddenly added to the mix in the Middle East.

“The people of Iraq own Iraq,” Chambliss said. “They’re the ones that ought to decide what’s best for them. I think the United Nations will be the ones to really facilitate whatever the new regime in Iraq will be.”

A response like that leads to one of two conclusions: Either he hasn’t thought deeply about an issue in his legislative bailiwick, or he’s simply not willing to show even a hint of dissent with the Bush administration’s hawkishness.

That leaves one to wonder whether he’s capable of disagreeing with a Bush team that’s steadily maneuvered to concentrate power (USA PATRIOT Act, the homeland security bill, etc.) in the executive branch and minimize or disregard (energy policy hearings, Enron, etc.) any checks on its power. So far, the answer seems to be no. Asked about a policy difference between himself and the Bush administration, Chambliss cites only one aspect of one issue: immigration. He wants the borders tighter.

What’s more, at one point Chambliss told his colleagues on a subcommittee he chairs that he wouldn’t consider amendments to the controversial PATRIOT Act that differed from what the administration wanted.

Of course, this may just be another case of making the best political play. Last year, Chambliss lost out on the chairmanship of the powerful House Budget Committee, which he coveted. After being stymied in the House and redistricted into a congressional race against Rep. Kingston, Chambliss decided to run for Senate. What better way to ensure the vigorous help of President Bush than to be a good soldier.

“The best word to describe Saxby is that he’s fairly wily,” says Georgia College professor Grant. “He’s very strategic. He really gets into the dynamic of playing the game. He really positioned himself very carefully.”

But being politically savvy isn’t reason enough to be elected to a body of the 100 most powerful lawmakers in the world. Sure, Chambliss has emphasized qualities that stand to make him popular in some parts of Georgia. He’s backed farmers and lower taxes. He emphasizes his strength on defense issues.

“I think it’s the kind that you can win with, yeah,” says University of Georgia political science professor Charles Bullock.

Chambliss likes to say that he’s going to bring Georgia values to the Senate. But his votes surely don’t represent a state whose seal contains the word “moderation.” The simple-minded repetition of the word “conservative” just isn’t reason enough to vote for a candidate.

Put another way: A Senate seat is too precious to go to someone who isn’t the best and brightest. Chambliss’ record is one of a party loyalist but not that of a leader concerned about the state’s most pressing problems.

“Saxby looks like a senator,” Grant says. “That may be Saxby’s best qualification at this point.”

kevin.griffis@creativeloafing.com