Thompson feels that Atlanta love

By Tom Baxter
Senior Vice President & Editor
Southern Political Report

(7/11/07) Fred Thompson and Barack Obama have at least one thing in common: Both have been to Atlanta, and felt the love.

Obama held a fundraiser in this check-writin’ city earlier this year, and his campaign was so impressed with the take that it began to lay plans for a public event to follow up on the enthusiasm they saw. The April 14 rally at Georgia Tech was hugely successful, drawing an estimated 20,000.

Thompson, racing to catch the best advantage from the buzz over his all-but candidacy, has done much the same thing in speeded-up fashion.

Thompson’s camp also was surprised by the success of its fundraiser last week at the home of Cousins Property CEO Tom Bell. According to GOP consultant Joel McElhannon – who got a midnight call asking if he’d pull together a meet-and-greet -- an invitation to come back to the city came Sunday afternoon in a call from radio conservative Sean Hannity to Mrs. Thompson, who passed it along to her husband.

However it was proffered, Thompson jumped at the chance to appear at the Hannity Freedom Concert South, which sold 13,000 tickets at the Gwinnett Arena.

“When I heard it was going to be Sean Hannity, country music and honoring our troops, I said this is a place I’ve got to be tonight,” Thompson told an enthusiastic crowd at the concert Tuesday night.

At the meet-and-greet before the show, the former U.S. senator from Tennessee told some 150 to 200 well-wishers to “keep your powder dry.”

“Were taking one step at a time. It’s not late at all. We’ve got plenty of time to get our message out across the country,” Thompson said.

You can stretch the Thompson-Obama comparison only so far. Obama, an announced candidate, raised more money at his fundraiser and drew a huge crowd on his on, whereas Thompson spoke to an arena full of people who had come to see Hannity, the Charlie Daniels Band and Larry the Cable Guy.

But if Obama is the rock star of the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, Thompson is setting himself up to be the country star of the Republican contest.

The smaller crowd at the meet-and-greet delighted over every folksy turn of phrase from the actor-lawyer-politician, and the crowd at the arena didn’t even have to hear his name to set off a roaring welcome. All Hannity had to say to spark the roar was, “He is from the South. He is thinking about running for president.”

Most in the arena had probably been listening to the radio earlier in the day and knew Hannity was talking about Thompson, but it was striking what a chord that generic description touched.

“It didn’t take you very long to spring into action. Don’t forget how to do that, by the way,” Thompson said earlier in the evening to the meet-and-greet crowd, which had a heavy sprinkling of younger conservative activists, along with more established Georgia Republicans like state House Rules Committee chair Earl Ehrhart, NRA national board member Carolyn Meadows and state Public Service Commissioner Mike Evans.

It’s interesting that, like Obama, the soon-to-be-65-year-old Thompson talks about “my generation” in his brief “be patient” message. Presumably he’s talking about a somewhat older set, but it’s another telling hint the two campaigns could be headed, for a while at least, on parallel tracks.

Earlier Tuesday, I spoke with Christina Cheatham, a student at Georgia College and State University in Milledgeville who was selected from a drawing of $5 contributors to fly to Washington and have dinner with Obama. She said some have ridiculed Obama as a “hope monger,” but that was fine with her.

“The president I want is someone who is optimistic and hopeful,” said the 21-year-old Obama supporter.

That’s what a lot of conservative Republicans see – right now at least – in Thompson. If I haven’t made your acquaintance already, let me take a minute to introduce myself.