Deal's steady tone seen as
 strong suit

By Bob Keefe

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

In nearly two decades in Congress, and before that in a dozen years in the state Senate, Nathan Deal earned a reputation as a middle-of-the-road fiscal conservative who didn’t make waves, didn’t call attention to himself and didn’t attract questions about his ethics.

Look for weighty legislation with his name on it in Atlanta or in Washington and you won’t find much that sticks out.

To be sure, the Republican candidate for governor has had successes on some issues.

As chairman of the House health subcommittee when Republicans controlled Congress, he helped slash billions in federal costs by pushing legislation that requires Medicaid recipients to prove they’re U.S. citizens, and by reducing or eliminating payments for some drugs, including Viagra.

He also beat back Democratic attempts to expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program that would have added billions more to Medicaid costs. At the same time, he pushed for Medicare Part D subsidies for prescriptions for seniors — something that, to the chagrin of many of Deal’s fellow conservatives, is expected to cost $66 billion this year.

Among Georgia’s seven Republican representatives in Congress, he was considered in his later years the de facto dean of the GOP delegation, the one who others turned to when they needed advice on a piece of legislation or unity on a statewide issue back home.

But for most of political life, Deal, 68, has been reserved and unremarkable, not attracting nearly the attention or making nearly the noise he has during his campaign for governor against Democrat Roy Barnes.

“He was basically a low-profile type of fellow who was open to anything that was in the best interest of his state,” said former state Sen. John Foster, a longtime friend of Deal’s who served with him in the state Senate.

In contrast to the swirl of ethics allegations that surround him today, Deal was known as an ethics champion in the state Senate during his time there from 1980-1992.

He was chairman of the Senate’s ethics committee, Foster pointed out, and also authored state ethics reform legislation while in the Senate.

For most of his time in the state Senate, Deal was relatively quiet; a dependable Democratic follower, not a leader, although he would serve as president pro tem of the Senate in his final four years there. Foster said he remembers Deal hand-writing notes to constituents — dozens of them at a sitting — in between votes. He also recalled how Deal, a Baptist deacon, would often give the invocation at the start of the legislative day.

“Nathan would get up there without any notice and would quote scripture without a thing in his hand,” Foster recalled. “He would have about a five-minute devotion and then lead us all in a prayer.”

Foster, 75, has been as a political mentor for Deal for decades. Their relationship started in the late 1950s when Deal was a senior in high school and went to work as a disc jockey at a radio station Foster owned in Sandersville.

After graduating with a law degree from Mercer University in 1966, Deal spent two years as a lawyer in the Army before going into private practice. He would later serve as a prosecutor and as a juvenile court judge in Hall County. The son of schoolteachers, Deal knew he someday wanted to do something in public service.

“They always regarded what they did as a public service,” Deal said in a recent interview, recalling his parents. “And I’ve always appreciated the fact that people who do public service are some of the best citizens we have.”

It was Foster who had encouraged Deal to run for state Senate and 12 years later, for Congress. Back then, Deal was a Democrat. But it took only a year in Washington before he began to realize politics in Washington was different than politics in Georgia.

“Being a Democrat there is very unlike being a Democrat in the state Senate,” he said. “I was always very conservative ... and when I got to Washington I thought I could be the same.”

It became very clear on his first major vote as a freshman congressman that he didn’t fit into the Democratic Party on a national level, Deal said.

The issue was President Bill Clinton’s 1993 economic policy package. Deal voted against Clinton’s budget, a proposed tax increase and other fiscal policies, infuriating his party but winning him favor with another fast-rising Georgia politician, Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

In 1995, Deal would switch parties, formally marking his transition to a more conservative lawmaker. Not only did it fit his own values better, he said, it fit the values of his district.

“I think it really reflects the constituents I was elected to represent,” Deal said in a recent interview. “They too have become more conservative over a period of time.”

In his last partial session in Congress, Deal voted with other Republicans 93 percent of the time. He sponsored 10 bills and co-sponsored 98, none of which became law. Even when Republicans controlled Congress and he was at the height of his own political power in the mid-1990s, he seldom introduced legislation on his own and rarely got anything passed.

One bill he co-sponsored was legislation commonly known as Megan’s Law, which requires law enforcement to release information about sexual predators.

Of course passing laws is only part of what Congress does. In his position on the House health committee, Deal consistently pushed for conservative ideals while fending off Democrats’ earlier health care proposals, typically making his and his party’s position known with lawyer-like authority coupled with his soft-spoken rural Georgian mannerism.

“I would say he’s a steady-at-the-wheel type of guy,” said U.S. Rep. John Shimkus of Illinois, who succeeded Deal as the ranking Republican on the House health subcommittee when Deal resigned in March. “He could be firm when he needed to be, but he was also always well-prepared.”

Even among adversaries, Deal was known for being always prepared for a debate and always arguing his position diplomatically, without drama or derision.

“He and I had disagreements, but I always understood his position,” said Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., the occasionally acerbic chairman of the powerful House Energy and Science Committee who’s considered a liberal leader in Washington. “One of the things I liked best about him was that you can look at an issue with him and agree to disagree in a respectful way.”

While keeping a low profile on national issues while in Congress, Deal focused on issues relevant to his northwest Georgia district.

Tom Oliver, chairman of the Hall County Commission, has known Deal for years and is a big supporter. Part of the reason, Oliver said, is because of Deal’s attention to the needs of Hall County and to the needs of Oliver’s business, poultry.

Oliver said he has worked closely with Deal on federal approvals for a new reservoir designed to provide the area with drinking water, recreation and development opportunities. And when Oliver’s poultry business needed federal help getting approval to export eggs to El Salvador a few years back, Deal stepped in on his behalf in Washington as well.

“His accessibility was always great,” Oliver said. “I’m not saying he will always tell you exactly what you want to hear, but he’s very accessible.”

While knowledgeable on national issues, Deal took pride in handling constituent issues, making a point to fly back to his district almost every weekend to see his family and the people who voted for him. The first four years of his congressional career he slept in his office and showered in the House gym, not wanting to put down anything that resembled roots in Washington.

Though publicly he condemned controversial congressional earmarks, Deal wasn’t afraid to ask for them when they benefited his region.

Last year, even amid outcries by his party about runaway government spending, Deal secured $1.2 million in federal funding for the North Georgia College ROTC program (he was in the ROTC himself at Mercer University) and another $392,000 for a streetscape project in Dahlonega, congressional records show. He got $500,000 funneled to the North Georgia Water Planning District.

The parochial politics that got Deal the most notice, however, had to do with chickens.

In 2003, Deal quietly got language inserted into an appropriations bill that reversed decades of government policy concerning the labeling of organic meats — including poultry, the state’s biggest agriculture export and one of the biggest industries in Deal’s home district. The congressman’s addition to the appropriations bill allowed meat producers to sell products under an organic label even if they gave their animals feed that wasn’t organic.

Deal attracted widespread national criticism for the amendment. He defended himself by proclaiming that federal officials had exhibited a “vegetarian bias.”

Two months later, Congress repealed Deal’s rider to the appropriations bill — but some never forgot his action.

“In the organic community, his name is historic,” Bob Scowcroft, executive director of the Organic Farming Research Foundation, a trade group. “The Deal Amendment is remembered to this day.”

Deal’s attention to constituents may have occasionally drawn scorn outside of Georgia, but it attracted campaign money and votes in his district.

During his past few years in Congress, his biggest campaign donors were health, pharmaceutical and insurance companies — reflective of his position on the House health committee. The poultry and egg industry was among the top 20 industries contributing to his campaigns.

Among voters, he easily won re-election year after year after year in the conservative 9th District, oftentimes running unopposed.

Deal won his last four elections by at least a 75 percent margin. His closest congressional race was 1994, but even then he won 58 percent of the vote.

“People voted for me, they supported me ... because they trusted me,” Deal said. “When you look to the people who know me best, my neighbors and my constituents, they’ve repeatedly ratified my service.”

Deal’s unbroken streak of easy wins — and his previously untarnished ethics reputation — ended with his run for governor.

His campaign against Barnes has become a bitter battle unlike anything Deal has ever experienced. He barely survived a Republican runoff and now has only a slim lead over Barnes in most polls.

And then there are the questions about his ethics.

They began with an Atlanta Journal-Constitution investigation last year that revealed he intervened with state officials to try and keep a lucrative no-bid agreement with the state for an auto-salvage business he co-owned. The Office of Congressional Ethics would later issue a report concluding that Deal improperly used his position as a congressman to influence the state.

Later came a barrage of other allegations: that his congressional office paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for air travel to a company owned by his chief of staff’s wife; that he pressured Hall County officials to take over maintenance of a road that served a business he co-owned; that he violated state campaign fundraising rules. Then was the embarrassing disclosure that Deal was teetering on bankruptcy because of a multimillion dollar loan he made to his daughter’s failed business.

“I would say he’s one of the least ethical people running for any office anywhere in the country this year,” said Melanie Sloan, executive director of the nonprofit, nonpartisan watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

Deal denies any wrongdoing. He chalks the ethics allegations up to election-year politics.

“I had never had any allegations about anything until I decided to run for governor,” Deal said. “Then all of the sudden people want to make issues about things that I don’t think have any relevancy for a governor’s race.”

Staff writer Alan Judd contributed to this article.