Handel calls Deal, concedes GOP nomination for governor
Atlanta Journal Constitution
by Aaron Gould Sheinin
August 11, 2010
11:07 AMYesterday, Karen Handel called Nathan Deal a “corrupt relic of Washington.” Today, however, Handel said she is endorsing him as the GOP nominee for governor. In a statement just released from the Handel campaign, she said she called Deal this morning to concede the nomination.The November ballot is now set. Deal will represent the GOP and face Democrat Roy Barnes and Libertarian John Monds.
Deal spokesman Brian Robinson said that U.S. Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, R-Ga., coordinated the phone call between Handel and Deal. “They had a very good talk,” Robinson said. “Nathan congratulated her on a great campaign. She told him that she would not ask for a recount and that she would be on board to help the party to victory in November.”
Deal, Robinson said, “thanked her for her graciousness and said he looked forward to meeting with her in person.We thank her for putting the party first and saving us a lot of heartache. She has shown that she is putting Georgia first and we are greatly appreciative of her selflessness in this situation.”
Earlier Wednesday, Deal appeared at a GOP “unity breakfast” in Buckhead, but Handel did not. But her statement this morning is clearly aimed at healing a party battered by months of a tough primary campaign and a brutal three-week runoff. Barnes, meanwhile, cruised to victory over six other opponents in the Democratic primary. While other Democrats, particularly House Minority Leader DuBose Porter, D-Dublin, took their shots at Barnes, that contest never reached the level of contention the GOP race.
AJC photographer John Spink said the room at the GOP breakfast was packed with at least 200 people. The GOP faithful warned that Barnes, the Democrat who lost to Sonny Perdue eight years ago, has wasted no time in launching an ad campaign against Republicans…
I didn’t see that coming. Karen Handel was right yesterday, Nathan Deal is a “corrupt relic of Washington” [though I suspect he was corrupt before he ever went to Washington]. The Democratic candidate, Roy Barnes, was defeated for a second term in 2002 for a variety of reasons – changing the State Flag being a big factor. Barnes also appointed his predecessor, Zell Miller ["Zell from Hell"], to the Senate to fill an empty seat [after Senator Paul Coverdale died]. Barnes is a good guy.
Why did Handel concede without a recount when she trailed by 0.0043 % with absentee and provisional ballots still to be counted? That might reverse, just through human counting error
But still — I just hate the idea that Deal’s anti-gay smear might have worked. He is beyond despicable for having put Youth Pride in the crosshairs of bigoted rhetoric and endangered kids.
I remember with great fondness being your neighbor when Roy Barnes was defeated and it seemed to me that the ONLY reason he was sent packing was his modest compromise adjustment to the state flag. Seemed to me that he’d taken careful note of the furor over in Columbia and the impact that the boycott of South Carolina was having. He had a responsibility to the people of Georgia and he made a decent job of it and should have been re-elected at the time. He tampered with the confederate battle flag and that provoked the irrational ire of enough of his ‘fellow’ Georgians. It was not a proud moment for the State of Georgia anymore than when the parents of Smyrna or Duluth turned out in droves to protest the high school principal’s decision to prohibit the wearing of confederate emblemata to school. At the time, I noted quietly to self that no parents were turning out to protest the feverish race to the bottom with Mississippi for the worst schools in the yooonightedstates. Nathan Deal is an embarrassment to humanity in the same way that Saxby Chambliss is and if he gets elected, it will be for the same reasons and tactics that Chambliss got himself elected – by obfuscation, lies, appealing to the basest of instincts in the electorate and being a good old boy shitbird.