Liberal Challenger Trailing in Polls : GOP Expected to Keep Its Georgia Senate Seat

In the Democratic Senate primary last August, Rep. Wyche Fowler Jr. put together a coalition of blacks and city liberals to defy the political odds, avoid a runoff election and score a narrow victory.

In a four-man field, Fowler outpolled Hamilton Jordan, White House chief of staff in the Jimmy Carter Administration. Jordan, who portrayed himself as a born-again conservative, got 31% of the ballots--mainly from suburbanites and rural voters, many of whom might otherwise support a Republican.

Georgia Democrats need both those constituencies if they are to defeat Republican Sen. Mack Mattingly in the general election Nov. 4, and it is doubtful that Fowler, whose voting record is the most liberal among Georgia’s 10-member congressional delegation, can gather enough support from the more conservative elements of the coalition to eke out a similar triumph over Mattingly.

In fact, as the race goes into its final days, Fowler appears to be trailing woefully.

Parade Shows Two Styles

Last Saturday’s National Pecan Festival parade here in Albany, a rural southeast Georgia community of 73,900, provided an apt metaphor for where the two contenders stand.

Mattingly was in the forefront of the procession, looking crisp, cool and confident as he rode along downtown Pine Street in a classic red Corvette convertible. Far behind him in the line of dignitaries came Fowler, who had spurned the use of a matching white Corvette and was, instead, jogging in sweaty shirt sleeves along the curb and reaching into the crowd for hands--and votes.

Mattingly’s commanding position in the Senate contest is all the more astonishing, since he had been widely considered vulnerable because of his “fluke” victory six years ago over the legendary Democratic Sen. Herman Talmadge.

Both major parties are watching this year’s race for the lessons it may yield. A fundamental ideological question about the Democratic Party’s future in the South was raised in the fierce primary battle between Fowler-as-liberal and Jordan-as-conservative.

Fowler, 46, a five-term congressman whose district includes most of Atlanta, drubbed Jordan by winning heavily in the state’s major urban centers and holding his own in the rural areas, but without Jordan’s suburban and rural votes, he now faces tough going.

“Right now, it looks like another case of the Democrats shooting themselves in the foot,” said Atlanta pollster and political analyst Claibourne H. Darden Jr.

‘Wrong Place, Wrong Time’

“Mack Mattingly may be perceived by a lot of Democrats as being inept, incompetent and in office, but he votes right by Georgia standards. Fowler’s biggest problem is that he is the wrong person from the wrong place at the wrong time--a liberal congressman from Atlanta at a time when conservatism, especially in the South, is the trend.”

Mattingly, 55, a Yankee transplant and former IBM salesman who became the Peach State’s first Republican senator since Reconstruction, seized the advantage over Fowler literally from the day his challenger was pronounced the victor in the Democratic primary.

In a blitz of radio and television advertisements financed from his multimillion-dollar campaign treasury, Mattingly accused Fowler of having a poor attendance record in Congress, of voting against a balanced-budget amendment and of being a big spender.

At the same time, the freshman senator built himself up as the savior of the federal peanut price support program, a friend of Social Security recipients and foe of wasteful government spending.

Mattingly’s ads about absenteeism--in which he charges Fowler with missing the equivalent of two years of voting during his nine in office--have been particularly effective with the rural and small-town voters who are crucial to any chance of an upset for Fowler.

In response, Fowler points out that he has a 90% attendance record and that much of the voting on Capitol Hill is on inconsequential resolutions and other non-legislative items.

“I’ll tell you what Sen. Mattingly’s been voting on while he’s trying to win an attendance record,” Fowler charged in a televised debate with Mattingly on Monday.

“He’s been voting on Cajun Resolution Week for August, 1986. He voted to commend Roger Clemens on his good pitching performance. He’s voted to change the names of post offices. Carl Vinson, Richard Russell, the great (Georgia) senators all had attendance records of about 75%, but they were effective. Sen. Mattingly has not been.”

The impact of Mattingly’s initial attack was dramatized by the results of a poll conducted in late September for Atlanta television station WAGA. The poll showed the Republican incumbent running ahead of his Democratic challenger, 53% to 35%. Mattingly’s whopping 18-point lead in that survey conformed closely to his edge in a poll conducted around the same time by the Fowler campaign.

No Change in Polls

The latest WAGA poll, conducted in mid-October, was even more discomforting to Fowler. It showed virtually no change in his standing against Mattingly as campaigning time dwindled.

Despite Fowler’s underdog status, however, few if any political analysts are willing to count him out at this point.

“In my opinion, it’s still a horse race,” said Loch Johnson, a University of Georgia political scientist. “Fowler has been reelected five times, and his people have campaigning down to a fine art. Out on the hustings, he doesn’t really come across as a liberal. He’ll talk about his grandfather, who was a farmer, or his mother, who was born just outside of Albany--and he knows every church song down to the fourth verse.

“In Mattingly’s case, so much will pivot on the Election Day turnout. It’s one thing to answer on the telephone that you favor X over Y, but it’s another thing to go out and vote X or Y. That’s where the Mattingly support has a soft underbelly.”

Elected in Big Turnout

Mattingly’s narrow victory over Talmadge in 1980 was aided by a big turnout at the polls and the overwhelming majorities the Republican racked up in the largest urban counties.

Political specialists say, however, that much of the Mattingly vote in reality was an “anti-Talmadge” vote--particularly among blacks, who gave the Republican one-third of their ballots--and Mattiingly must work hard to win it back this year.

Meanwhile, Fowler’s campaign staff expresses confidence that he can buck the tide:

“Our theory is that, as in the primary, the race is going to be won or lost in the last two or three weeks,” said Bill Johnstone, Fowler’s campaign manager. “We saw in the primary that we moved, in our own tracking, from about a 3-point lead 2 1/2 weeks out, to ultimately winning by a 19-point margin on Election Day. And our indications are that the electorate is similarly volatile at this time.”

Even Mattingly supporters concede that the race is not in the bag for him. In fact, President Reagan is to make yet another campaign stop in Georgia on Tuesday, to bolster Mattingly’s campaign.

“It will be a closer race than the polls indicate now,” said Richard Moore, Mattingly’s campaign press secretary. “There’s no gainsaying the fact that nowhere in the country--Georgia included--are voters falling all over themselves to get to the polls. A low voter turnout generally does not bode well for someone in Mattingly’s position in a state like Georgia.”

Still, as one political observer said:

“Nobody’s going to bet the mortgage on Fowler’s winning.”