Former state Rep. Jim Martin on Tuesday earned the right to challenge Georgia Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss by easily winning the Democratic primary runoff, in a contest in which Martin’s supporters portrayed him as more “electable” than his controversy-hindered opponent, DeKalb County CEO Vernon Jones.

Martin nonetheless faces an uphill battle to make a serious run at Chambliss, who benefits from Georgia’s recently strong Republican voting trend and a daunting campaign finance advantage. Chambliss was unopposed for renomination in the July 15 Republican primary.

Martin needed the extra three weeks of campaigning to sweep past Jones, who narrowly led Martin by 34 percent to 30 percent atop a five-candidate Democratic primary field but fell way short of the majority needed to avoid the runoff. Martin took a mighty leap ahead and led by 59 percent to Jones’ 41 percent with more than 90 percent of precincts reporting in Tuesday’s runoff.

Jones’ biggest strengths in the crowded primary contest — most importantly, the support he received from heavily black jurisdictions as the only African-American candidate — failed him in the runoff.

Martin ran even slightly better than he did statewide in Jones’ home base, DeKalb County in suburban Atlanta, and had an even more lopsided lead in incomplete returns from Fulton County, which includes Atlanta itself.

Jones’ critics argued that he was too controversial to wage a general election race against a strongly favored incumbent such as Chambliss. Jones was accused of rape in 2004, though the charge was rescinded at the accuser’s request and Jones defended the encounter as a consensual act which occurred between himself, the accuser and another woman. Jones also endured criticism for a record as the top elected official in DeKalb that Cynthia Tucker, the Atlanta Journal Constitution’s editorial page editor and an African-American journalist, said included “divisive racial politics.”

Jones campaigned for the seat as a conservative Democrat, a positioning aimed in part at a possible general election audience. But he took the unusual tack, while campaigning for the primary and runoff votes of Democratic loyalists, of stating that he had twice supported George W. Bush for president.

Martin has not completely avoided controversy himself during his political career, stepping down in 2003 as head of the state Department of Human Resources after enduring criticism over the deaths of two children who were under the care of the state. But he also received praise from some quarters for his stewardship of the agency.

He rebounded to claim the Democratic nomination for lieutenant governor in 2006, but lost to Republican Casey Cagle as Republican Gov. Sonny Perdue won an easy re-election victory at the top of the ticket.

This year, Martin ran for the Democratic Senate nomination as an “independent voice for Georgia” and was highly critical of the Bush administration. He advocated accessible and affordable health care to Americans, lowering middle-class taxes and bringing U.S. troops home from Iraq during the campaign.

In the weeks before the runoff, the candidates’ presidential preferences became a major sticking point in local debates and in advertising. Jones, deflecting criticism over his votes for President Bush in 2000 and 2004, argued that Martin went out of his way to not vote for Democrat Barack Obama in the Feb. 5 Georgia presidential primary in which Obama easily defeated top rival Hillary Rodham Clinton . Martin had maintained his endorsement of former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, the 2004 Democratic vice presidential nominee, even though Edwards already had ended his candidacy by the time of the primary.

But Martin received a key runoff endorsement from civil rights leader Joseph Lowery, who with the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and later headed the organization for 20 years. Martin also won the support of two of the competitors eliminated in the Democratic primary, former Atlanta television reporter Dale Cardwell, who took 16 percent in that contest and environmental engineer Rand Knight, who took 5 percent.

After a taxing primary and runoff season, Martin now must quickly regroup to stage a viable campaign against Chambliss. In his victory speech Tuesday, he conceded has a “long, long way to go” to victory but began taking aim squarely at Chambliss on issues such as health care, according to local FOX affiliate WAGA in Atlanta. “Tonight, we start talking about the difference between my view, our view, for the right future for America” and Chambliss’ views, Martin said.