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Will the Trump effect cost Georgia incumbents?
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Tom Crawford

Whether you like or dislike Donald Trump, there’s no question he has pulled off an impressive political feat.

When he announced his candidacy last year, Trump was considered a joke in a Republican presidential field whose “serious” candidates included seven current or former governors and five current or former senators.

But Trump plowed ahead in his crude, bombastic way and outlasted them all to become the presumptive GOP nominee.

The Republican base is angry with their leadership, which is why they picked Trump over the candidates who were the establishment favorites.

That Trump effect has worked its way down to the congressional level in Georgia.

Several incumbents who haven’t tried to overthrow the party leadership are sweating out challenges from obscure, under-funded opponents.

We see in these primary races the same disgust with the party establishment that fueled Trump’s candidacy.

In the 11th Congressional District, which is one of the most Republican-leaning districts in the country, Rep. Barry Loudermilk is just about as conservative a politician as you’ll find. It would be difficult to run to the right of Loudermilk without falling into an alternate universe.

Even so, Loudermilk is facing four challengers in the GOP primary, mainly because he had the audacity to vote for the reelection of John Boehner as House speaker last year.

Some of Loudermilk’s opponents are more credible than others. One opponent, a talk radio host, has raised a grand total of $210. Another opponent once served a year in prison.

Daniel Cowan, on the other hand, is a businessman who’s put more than $268,000 of his own money into the race against Loudermilk and has the resources to run TV spots.

Cowan says he is running because “it’s clear that the career politicians are failing us.” We should note here that Loudermilk hasn’t quite finished his first term in Congress, so he hasn’t really had the time to establish much of a political “career.” For his opponents, it’s obviously been far too long a career.

The same dynamic is at work in the 9th Congressional District with U.S. Rep. Doug Collins, who’s a grizzled veteran compared to Loudermilk — Collins is in his second term as a congressman.

Collins is almost as conservative as Loudermilk, but he also finds himself contending with a gaggle of opponents, including former congressman Paul Broun, who complain that he isn’t right-wing enough.

Before he lost in the 2014 Senate race, Broun served seven loopy years in the House, where he became known for oddball beliefs that included an assertion that the Earth was less than 9,000 years old.

Broun has run a scorched-earth campaign against Collins, deriding him as “the poster child for the Washington cartel” and claiming that “DC fat cat Doug Collins is back on the establishment’s payroll.”

Collins’ sin is that he voted for Boehner and for a spending bill that included money for Planned Parenthood -- without it, the bill wouldn’t have passed and the federal government would have shut down.

It’s clear that the incumbents are taking a lot of flak in the primaries. They are also, however, taking in buckets of campaign money, as incumbents traditionally do.

The latest disclosure reports show that Collins has raised about $845,000, while Broun’s total is a measly $76,000. The other candidates in the running — Bernie Fontaine, Mike Scupin, and Roger Fitzpatrick — have raised a little than $30,000 combined.

Loudermilk is a relatively modest fundraiser, but he’s still amassed $514,000.

There’s a similar situation over in the 8th Congressional District, where Rep. Austin Scott (R-Tifton) has GOP primary opposition from Angela Hicks. Scott has a war chest of more than $709,000 while Hicks has only raised $29,570, most of it her own money.

That kind of financial advantage is a big reason why 98 percent of congressional incumbents get reelected. It’s hard to get your opposition message out if you don’t have enough money to go on TV or send out mailers.

The conventional wisdom holds that Loudermilk, Collins, Scott, and other congressmen with primary opposition will when the votes are counted in next week’s primaries.

But that’s what established politicians like Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and Jeb Bush once thought about Donald Trump. Look where they are now.

Tom Crawford is editor of The Georgia Report, an internet news service at gareport.com that reports on state government and politics. He can be reached at tcrawford@gareport.com.