[tag]Ralph Reed[/tag], a man who once bragged about leaving his political opponents in “body bags,” saw his political career come to a screeching halt last night. In fact, it wasn’t even close.
Ralph Reed, the former director of the [tag]Christian Coalition[/tag] and a former Republican lobbyist involved in the Jack Abramoff scandal, suffered an embarrassing defeat in his effort to win the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor on Tuesday.
Mr. [tag]Reed[/tag] conceded defeat before 10 p.m., with his opponent leading by more than 10 percentage points.
Early Wednesday, with more than 92 percent of precincts reporting, Mr. Reed’s opponent, State Senator [tag]Casey Cagle[/tag], led with 56 percent of the vote.
A year ago, Reed was expected to not only win the primary, but cruise to an easy victory. A week ago, Reed was neck and neck with Cagle. And 12 hours ago, Reed lost by double digits. Ouch.
This may have been a GOP [tag]primary[/tag] for a lieutenant governor’s race in [tag]Georgia[/tag], but Reed’s embarrassing defeat has national implications: Reed has been one of the leading figures in the Jack [tag]Abramoff[/tag] scandal for months. The GOP line has been that the culture-of-corruption issue isn’t connecting with voters and that Abramoff’s name is not a big deal outside the beltway. Reed’s vote total suggests otherwise. Indeed, as Jesse Lee noted, Reps. John Doolittle, Richard Pombo, Jerry Lewis, Bob Ney, and Charles Taylor can’t be pleased with yesterday’s results.
As for Reed personally, this race was supposed to be the start of a very successful career in elected office. The far-right Washington Times reported last year that Reed planned to win this race in ’06, run for governor in 2010, and then run for president after that. Seriously. Yesterday’s results will probably put a crimp in those plans.
Oddly enough, the happiest people in the country about Reed’s defeat are probably Republican leaders in Georgia.
“It may mean that Democrats lose the lieutenant governor’s race,” said William Boone, a political science professor at Clark-Atlanta University. “It certainly takes away the issue of corruption that the Democrats nationally have been using.”
In recent months, most of Georgia’s GOP establishment endorsed Cagle. Gov. Sunny Purdue (R) made clear he preferred to seek re-election without four months of stories about Reed’s over-the-top corruption making headlines. I know a lot of Dems in Georgia who wanted nothing more than a Reed victory yesterday because it might have helped boost the Dem ticket statewide.
Maybe. But in the meantime, seeing Reed humiliated in his home state by a virtual unknown helps restore my faith in the electorate, at least a little.