Every political strategist and pundit will tell you that 2012 is going to be an anti-incumbent year from the school board to the White House.  It is the perfect storm for incumbents – distrust of governmental institutions, a feeling that the country is headed in the wrong direction and the worst economic condition since the Great Depression.  All of this has created a voter anger and intensity unlike anything that has been seen in recent years.  Indeed the voter anger makes 1994 and 2010 pale in comparison.   The closest comparable election would be 1992 when more incumbents were defeated at all levels either in primaries or the federal election than any time since the 1930s.  Many were taken by surprise in 1992 yet they shouldn’t have been since the 1991 municipal elections had shown incumbent officeholders in both partisan and non-partisan races retired at record levels.  This poses the question, will we see such a voter repudiation in 2011 and what do you do when both candidates are incumbents.  We may have an answer on November 8th with the mayoral race in the suburban community of Snellville, Georgia.

Snellville, Georgia is a suburban community about thirty miles out of Atlanta in the heavily Republican county of Gwinnett.  It is one of the communities that political strategists love to target in campaigns and say is representative of political trends nationally.  The city is world famous for its slogan, 'Everybody's Somebody In Snellville'. 

This year the city has a non-partisan mayoral race with the current Mayor, Jerry Oberholtzer term-limited.  The two candidates vying for the position are both incumbent office holders – Barbara Bender and Kelly Kautz.  The race could be an indicator for how incumbent officeholders when paired against each other will campaign with tactics and strategy.  The race for the office that pays only $6,000 a year has been bitter and nasty as demonstrated by one of the candidates, recalling Margaret Thatcher’s famous quote, “the lower the office, the pettier people are in achieving it.”

Elected in 2005 to Snellville City Council, Barbara Bender serves as Mayor Pro-Tem.    A Certified Public Accountant for 20 years and Vice President of Hamilton Financial, she comes across on the campaign trail and in discussions as a cross between Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and Pennsylvania Senator Pat Toomey.  Indeed at a recent candidate debate with her opponent, when talking about the city budget, she said “budget is my gig” almost echoing Toomey in 2010 when he said, “the budget is what gets my blood going.”  In her tactics, Bender has been running on her record and also her vision for the future.  She has refused to respond to the negative attacks and allegations of her opponents and has been unafraid to run away from her record on the City Council.  In this she seems to mirror Scott Walker and his campaign for Governor of Wisconsin in 2010.  Walker was unafraid to run on his record of Milwaukee County Executive and concentrated his campaign on his vision for Wisconsin’s future.  He also refused to respond to reckless attacks by his Democratic opponent and the Democratic National Committee despite pleas to do so.  Bender likewise is proud of her record, especially that of the past several years which saw her able to get things done that benefited the community like the new farmer’s market ranked as one of the top three in the nation.  Again like Walker, Toomey, and Florida’s Marco Rubio and Rick Scott, Bender is running as a business friendly candidate.   Bender believes that a positive campaign brings people into the political process and encourages them to take part in city events.  Unlike many candidates who believe the new way to get elected is shunning events, Bender embraces them and wouldn’t dream of not attending them.  She sees it as a less formal way for voters to interact.  This is very much like Walker, Toomey, and Rubio who said that local events let them connect with voters in a way their opponents never understood (indeed the trio continue doing such events now unlike other politicians who do them only during election years, something Bender did in the past and will continue to do).   Bender also is unafraid to let people know that she is part of the reformist and visionary majority on the current city council.  Also like Walker, Rubio, and Toomey, Bender gears her campaign towards all voters and doesn’t seem to be microtargeting. 

Kelly Kautz, Bender’s opponent an attorney who formerly served as an Assistant District Attorney in neighboring Walton County.   Very much like Florida’s Charlie Crist (I am a Republican, I am an Independent, I am not yet a Democrat) Kautz cries victim at every unfavorable mention on a blog or Facebook page.  Despite attacking Bender and in many ways distorting her record, Kautz says she isn’t going negative (very much the way Arlen Specter vowed he would never go negative against Pat Toomey in 2004 and then in the next breath vowing to rip Toomey’s heart out with a barrage of attacks).  Kautz’s answer to everything at a recent debate was to propose citizen roundtables to work with the Mayor’s office, very similar to Wisconsin Democrat Tom Barrett’s proposal of Governor’s Roundtables which led Scott Walker to say if Barrett is meeting with his roundtables all the time when would he have time to govern.  When a voter asked her (even though the race is non-partisan) what political party she belonged too, Kautz refused to answer talking about her independence.  This is a tactic we saw in 2010 when Democrats ran away from their Party label and we saw most recently when Florida’s longtime Democrat Bill Nelson said “I am not a Democrat, I am an independent thinker.”   Like the unions that took on Scott Walker in the recent recall elections in Wisconsin, Kautz has claimed that her campaign signs were stolen (so far unlike the unions, Kautz has yet to be found the one who stole them).  Kautz is perceived as a member of the old guard of Snellville politics who are responsible for much of the city’s troubled political past.  Kautz denies it.  Unlike Bender, Kautz in a recent debate didn’t seem friendly to business interests or concerned with the economic suffering the Great Recession has brought.  Kautz’s strategy has been to attack, attack, and attack some more and hope that something sticks on Bender.  So far it hasn’t.  Indeed Kautz’s whole strategy seems like a replay of the tactics employed by such Democrats as Alex Sink, Tom Barrett, Arlen Specter, and others in 2010.  And we saw how well that played out.

One last note on Kelly Kautz and one we see sometimes in candidates, Katie Norris who co-wrote this article talked to her about her race for Mayor.  Katie said Kautz seemed very professional and engaged in the campaign and in the interview.  Unlike Ms. Bender, she requested that all the answers she had given be reviewed by her before use.  Katie responded by doing so.  From that point on Kautz was anything but professional or friendly.  She was venomous.  She claimed those were not her answers and that they must be changed.  Katie offered to let her change or revise her answers.  Instead, like Al Gore in 2000 or more recently unhinged former Democratic Congressman Alan Grayson, Kautz threatened to sue Katie if her answers were used in the article.

The Snellville Mayors race like others to be held across the nation is still up for grabs.  What is not up for grabs is that we will see two styles of campaigning in these final days and in 2012.  One will be a positive upbeat message for the future in the tradition of Ronald Reagan and more recently Marco Rubio, Scott Walker, and Bobby Jindal.  The other will be the slash and burn character assassination of Chicago politics in the tradition of Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and Arlen Specter.  Which candidate employs which strategy will say much about their standings in the polls.  How voters respond will determine how incumbents in anti-incumbent years run and later what they can expect in their leaders.