1 Boring Old Man

GOP’s Nathan Deal Leads Democrat Roy Barnes in Georgia Governor’s Race
Politics Daily
by Bruce Drake
09/13/2010

Former Republican Rep. Nathan Deal is leading Democrat Roy Barnes by 49 percent to 38 percent in the race for governor in Georgia, according to a SurveyUSA poll conducted Sept. 10-12 for 13WMAZ. Libertarian candidate John Monds, whose website says he is the first African-American to be on the gubernatorial ballot in the state, draws 9 percent of the vote and another 4 percent are undecided. The margin of error is 4.1 points.

Fifty-four percent of independents back Deal compared to 34 percent for Barnes, who served one-term as governor between 1999 and 2003. Monds gets 18 percent of independents. Nearly two-thirds of voters who disapprove of the way the federal government is operating support Deal. Republicans have sought to tie Barnes closely to President Obama who is very unpopular in the state. For his part, Barnes has tried to distance himself from Obama and national Democrats, telling the Associated Press in a recent interview that the new health care reform law could be "financially devastating" for Georgia.

As an indicator of public mood, the poll also showed that Republicans are leading in all the top statewide races, including Senate, lieutenant governor, attorney general and school superintendent.

I live down here. I’ve always lived down here in the South. I’m sort of used to this kind of thing, but that doesn’t remove the sting. I actually know some of the Democrats running or who have run recently. They’re fine people, good southerners with accents thicker than mine. Roy Barnes is a decent person and he was a good Governor. His sins were being a Democrat in 2002, and changing the State flag from the Confederate Battle Flag introduced back in 1956 by our segregationist Governor Lester Maddox.

I used to think I understood this kind of thing – something about regional pride, or racism, or Appalachian individualism. But that was back when I lived in Atlanta which is a very different place than out here in rural Georgia. I don’t feel that way any more. Now I see it as a disengagement from the rest of the world – some kind of avoiding the context of the rest of the planet – an inertia of rest.

Nathan Deal looks and talks like the other people around here. Roy Barnes does too, but he’s been associated with outsiders. Why he even won a Profile in Courage Award from the John F. Kennedy Library for minimizing the Confederate battle emblem on the Georgia state flag despite the political fallout. Nathan Deal [as I mentioned in my last post], has done nothing except use his Congressional position to throw business to he and his partner and lose everything in a failed business venture. His tv ads are shameful appeals to link Roy Barnes with the forces of evil. Each one nastier than the last. Nathan Deal is riding the crest of dissatisfaction with government, ironically, a government he was part of. Go figure.

I’ll be very surprised if Roy Barnes is elected Governor, or our friend Joe Martin is elected as State School Superintendent. Right now, democracy in Georgia hasn’t got much to do with putting competent people in public office. It’s about making some kind of statement that seems more like something in the water than any kind of rational thought – dreams from a Tara that never was but for the few, and then only briefly…