Rep. Sanford Bishop Faces Tough Fight

Is Rep. Bishop's re-election in trouble?

From News 4 Georgia, about the moderate-liberal Georgia Democrat: "After coasting to re-election in recent years in a swing district, Democratic Rep. Sanford Bishop is facing an aggressive, well-funded GOP challenger who is trying to capitalize on several recent flaps and Bishop's support for much of President Obama's agenda. The nine-term lawmaker faces Republican Mike Keown, a conservative state legislator, Baptist minister and former mayor who has criticized Bishop for giving charity scholarships to his relatives and for a Bishop staffer's obscene phone call to a local farmer."

The article continues: "Keown is also seizing on Bishop's votes for President Barack Obama's health care overhaul and economic stimulus package - both unpopular in rural Georgia - to try to draw votes from a Democratic lawmaker who veers right on social issues such as gay marriage and gun rights. Bishop has said the votes helped his district."

More: "For his part, Bishop has maintained a winning coalition of urban blacks, moderate whites and rural voters, particularly farmers. He's won every election since 2004 with more than 60 percent of the vote and ran unopposed in 2002. Bishop co-chaired Obama's campaign in Georgia, but is known as one of the most conservative Democrats in Congress. A lawyer first elected in 1992, Bishop has courted rural farmers by being a reliable ally in Congress when federal agencies debated limiting peanuts on airplanes and reducing federal agriculture subsidies. He also has fought for farmer interests in ongoing water disputes over the Chattahoochee River."

Booker Rising response: Some background about Georgia's 2nd Congressional District. It is 59% urban and 41% rural. The district is 51% white, 45% black, and 4% Hispanic. It has a Cook Partisan Voting Index of +1 Democratic, so yeah it's a swing district. Rep. Bishop is the only black U.S. Congressman of a majority-white district in the South, and it ain't lookin' good for him right about now (that scholarship cronyism scandal sure ain't helpin' matters). What he has on his side is his staunch support of peanut farmers and the military (Ft. Benning is in the district). It would be sad to see one of the few centrist members of the Congressional Black Caucus get picked off, but that educational scandal and his health care vote were giveaways to his opponents.

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