Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle and Senate leaders stalling legislation calling for a vote on Sunday alcohol sales say they haven't heard from Georgians on the issue, but that's about to change.

An online petition supporting the Sunday sales vote — http://www.petitiononline.com/GASB138/petition.html — had garnered about 3,500 signatures late Monday in less than a week without much publicity.

And lobbyists backing the sales bill may be up with a web site by the end of the week that will make it easy for Georgians to both contact their legislators on the issue and sign the petition.

"There is an intensity out there, people care about this issue," said Jim Tudor, a lobbyist for the convenience store industry.

The Christian Coalition, which opposes the measure, plans to fight back with its own email campaign.

"We're clearly going to respond. We have to," said Georgia Christian Coalition President Jim Beck. "We will obviously be letting everybody know the death merchants are back at work."

Supporters want to restart debate on legislation that has been dead since Cagle and Senate leaders decided to put it on hold last spring.

The bill, which passed the Senate Regulated Industries and Utilities Committee last year, would allow counties to hold referendums on legalizing the Sunday sale of beer, wine and spirits at stores. Many communities already allow Sunday sales at restaurants.

Last week, Jaillene Hunter, spokeswoman for Cagle, said that the lieutenant governor's office hadn't received many calls about the Sunday sales bill. On Monday, she said Cagle's office has been contacted 91 times on the issue in the past two weeks. That's far less than on legislation allowing Georgians to have firearms in their cars when they go to work but more often than on watering restrictions, two issues that have gotten far more publicity.

Senators opposing the measure say their constituents haven't contacted them about the legislation.

Last week, after the AJC reported on the issue, a reader calling himself Georgia Citizen created the online petition calling for a repeal of the Sunday sales prohibition.

When contacted using the email address on the petition site, Georgia Citizen said he wanted to remain anonymous. But he described himself as a Republican, a Christian and an Atlanta business executive who rarely drinks alcohol.

"I can assure you I have absolutely nothing to do with special interests nor lobbies on either side of this issue," he wrote. "This is not an organized effort, it was purely spontaneous."

Tudor, who is lobbying for the Sunday sales bill, said his group of supporters had nothing to do withthe petition.

"We don't have a clue who started this," Tudor said.

The AJC could not verify the names on the petition. Each person who put his or her name on the list included a zip code and many added comments.

Beck of the Christian Coalition said his organization has an email list of about 7,000 people who oppose the measure, and he will be sending out a call to arms on the issue.

Supporters of Sunday sales, he said, "Continue to push this notion that there is a hue and cry from the land. I can't see any evidence of that. Out of 9 million Georgians, 3,000 people signed a petition."