CQ TODAY ONLINE NEWS
– POLITICS
April 19, 2009 – 9:52 a.m.
Many Candidates, No Favorite in Georgia Governor’s Race
By Greg Vadala, CQ Staff
Georgia Republicans faced a multi-candidate 2010 primary for governor, even with Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle in the race as the consensus favorite to win the nomination to succeed term-limited Republican Gov. Sonny Perdue . But Cagle’s surprise announcement last Wednesday that he was withdrawing from the race, citing health problems, has thrown the contest even more up for grabs — and has still more candidates thinking about joining the field.
The crowded field of contenders has been forming since 2006, when Perdue was re-elected to a second consecutive term, the maximum allowed under Georgia’s term-limit law.
Cagle’s announcement fueled talk that Cobb County Commission Chairman Sam Olens and state House Speaker Pro Tempore Mark Burkhalter could join a Republican primary field that already includes state Insurance Commissioner John Oxendine, Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel and state Rep. Austin Scott.
A bruising battle for the Republican nomination would be a pleasing prospect for Georgia Democrats, who long were dominant in Georgia politics but have lost major ground in recent years. But they may face a primary brawl of their own.
State Attorney General Thurbert Baker, state House Minority Leader DuBose Porter and former Georgia Secretary of State David Poythress have all kicked off their campaigns for the Democratic nomination. Still pending is a decision by former Gov. Roy Barnes — who lost his 2002 re-election bid to Perdue — about whether he will seek a comeback.
Painful Concession
The early ferment in the governor’s race was spurred by Cagle’s withdrawal announcement during a press conference Wednesday at the state Capitol in Atlanta. The 43-year-old Cagle said he has had shoulder and neck pain for a number of years, and that the condition worsened during this year’s legislative session to the point at which he will need surgery.
Instead of running for governor, Cagle said he would seek a second term as lieutenant governor. His 2006 victory made him the first Republican to hold that office in state history.
Merle Black, a professor at Emory University in Atlanta and a longtime analyst of Southern politics, said Cagle was the front-runner in the Republican contest for governor, adding, “With Cagle out, there is no obvious front-runner.”
Cagle’s decision to end his bid coincidentally came on the same day that a poll by InsiderAdvantage Georgia showed him leading in the primary campaign for governor. The poll, conducted April 13, showed 28 percent of respondents favoring Cagle, with Oxendine at 14 percent, Handel at 6 percent and 46 percent undecided or stating no opinion.
Those numbers for the remaining candidates are unlikely to scare off potential new entries. “All the speculation about more GOP hopefuls jumping in the race suggests they wouldn’t be deterred by Oxendine or Handel,” Black said.
Matt Towery of InsiderAdvantage Georgia said, though, that he considers Oxendine to be “a fierce competitor,” adding, “He would be the one that I would keep my eye on.”
Oxendine is currently traveling around Georgia on what he said he is a “grass-roots listening tour of the state.” In a phone interview while on his way from Carrollton in west Georgia to a meeting with business leaders in Atlanta, Oxendine questioned whether Handel has enough experience to be governor.
“She’s only been a statewide elected official for two years,” said Oxendine, who is now in his fourth term as insurance commissioner.
Handel said her background as a corporate executive and experience as the president and CEO of the North Fulton Chamber of Commerce distinguish her from the rest of the current crop of candidates.
“I’m not a 20-year politician. I’m first and foremost a businesswoman,” Handel said in a phone interview following a meeting with farmers and agriculture leaders in south Georgia.
Cagle and Oxendine were the only Republican candidates when year-end 2008 campaign finance reports were filed with state authorities. Cagle had $1.2 million in cash on hand, and Oxendine had about $870,000. The next round of campaign filings are due June 30.
Democrats in Waiting
Georgia’s Democrats, who will be trying to reclaim a governor’s office they dominated for well more than a century before Perdue’s first win in 2002, face quite opposite political circumstances. Barnes, the potential favorite for their nomination, is still on the outside, mulling his decision about whether to run.
Referring to Barnes, University of Georgia political science professor Charles S. Bullock III said, “If he were to enter, he would immediately become the Democratic front-runner.”
Bullock’s analysis appeared to be backed by the InsiderAdvantage poll. It showed Barnes leading the Democratic field with 35 percent of the vote. Baker, who has won three elections for state attorney general and is bidding to become the state’s first black governor, ran a distant second at 11 percent. The other two announced candidates were in the low single digits, and 49 percent undecided.
Barnes’ spokesman Chris Carpenter said the former governor, who practices law in the Atlanta suburb of Marietta, has received encouragement from business and community leaders to wage a campaign, but is still undecided.
“He’s hearing from lots of folks and he knows he’s got to make a decision,” said Carpenter, who added that Barnes will announce his decision “by the end of May.”
Yet even though Barnes’ past experience and name ID might push him to the head of the Democratic field, Bullock added that “it’s not clear that he could win the governorship.”
Barnes had been regarded as a solid favorite for re-election entering his 2002 campaign, but some controversies surfaced up during his term ended up costing him. Many white voters, especially in rural areas, voiced resentment in 2001 after Barnes ordered a redesign of the state flag, which had been dominated since 1956 by a representation of the the Confederate “stars and bars” battle flag. He also angered teachers and weakened his political base by pushing an education overhaul bill that required testing of students and teachers.
Perdue came from behind to defeat Barnes by 51 percent to 46 percent. Perdue won re-election in 2006 much more easily, defeating Democrat Mark Taylor, then the incumbent lieutenant governor, by 58 percent to 38 percent.
Among the candidates already in the field, Baker has by far the biggest political base from his previous statewide campaigns and his ties to an overwhelmingly Democratic African-American constituency that makes up more than a quarter of Georgia’s population.
But Towery of the InsiderAdvantage firm that produced the governor’s race poll said he expects that Baker and Barnes would campaign fairly evenly for support of black voters. “I don’t see Thurbert simply taking the African-American vote,” Towery said.
Political scientist Black also said “it’s not a foregone conclusion” that African-American voters will rally around Baker’s candidacy.
Black and Towery both said Baker’s standing with some African-American voters could be hurt by his strong defense of Georgia’s law that requires state residents to produce a state-issued form of identification in order to vote — a statute that critics say could complicate voting for poorer citizens who do not have driver’s licenses or alternative state identification — and his opposition in 2007 to the release of Genarlow Wilson, who had been sentenced to 10 years in jail for engaging in consensual oral sex with a 15-year old girl when he was 17.
(Gridlocked) Road to a Comeback?
Among the issues that could play in both parties’ primaries and the general election, the state’s chronic transportation problems could emerge in a major way. Towery said the handling of transportation by the Republican-controlled legislature has caused “a great deal of irritation among business leaders.”
Longtime Atlanta political columnist Tom Baxter, who is now the editor of the Southern Political Report, said transportation issues could give Democrats an opening to take back the governor’s mansion.
“The legislative session ended without any clarity about transportation funding,” Baxter said. “There’s a lot of widespread discontent in the Atlanta metro area with how the legislature has handled things.”
Gubernatorial candidate Porter, who leads the Democratic opposition in the state House, said Georgia Republicans “don’t have the commitment or political will” to address the transportation problems.
A rural attorney and newspaper publisher, Porter took his critique further, accusing the Republicans of lacking leadership on education, conservation and health care issues. He said his positioning as a Democratic moderate and ties to both rural Georgia and the Atlanta business community give him an advantage over the other Democrats in the field.
“You have to have rural Georgia to win,” Porter said. “I’m the only one that can bring rural Georgia in a way that’s compatible with the needs of Atlanta.”
Poythress, a former commander of the Georgia National Guard and the first candidate to enter the race, said he considers himself a conservative Democrat in the mold of Zell Miller, a former governor and senator, and former Sen. Sam Nunn. He said he is not worried by the success of statewide Republicans in the last few election cycles.
“Georgia is fundamentally a very conservative state,” Poythress said. “It is not fundamentally Republican.”
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