Orthopedic surgeon and retired Army Lt. Col. Wayne Mosley (R) will make the Congressional bid in 2010 that many Republicans had hoped he’d make in 2008.
Mosley had been talked up in GOP circles in the previous cycle as the best candidate against Rep. John Barrow (D) in the eastern Georgia 12th district, but he backed away from the race in late 2007.
Now, the decorated veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars has already filed his 2010 statement of candidacy with the Federal Election Commission. In that filing he indicated he intended to spend half a million dollars of his own money on the race.
Mosley appears to be a considerable upgrade for the GOP here, whose 2008 nominee, radio “personality” John Stone, spent just $280K and went on to suffer a 32-point defeat at Barrow’s hands. Still, even without a presidential campaign to turn out the district’s African-American community in full force, Mosley will be facing a tough task against an incumbent who finally seems to be entrenching himself two elections after this district’s boundaries were redrawn.
Even with a drop-off in black turnout, Barrow doesn’t have that much to worry about.
His opponent’s background sounds very similar to Jim Marshall’s (GA-08) opponent in 2008 and Marshall was re-elected to his far more conservative seat by a something like 57-43. I’m sure Obama will make a couple campaign stops for Barrow which will help with the crucial AA vote.
Obama won the district by 9%. Even Kerry won the district. He’s way too conservative for it. He ought to go statewide and save us the trouble.
I’m not too worried about this one.
My thinking is that they’ll concede this one and try to dump as many Democratic precincts from the tenth, first, and eight districts into the twelvth.