In Olens’ run, will religion matter?

More than 20 years ago, Cathey Steinberg set out on a journey that Cobb County Commissioner Sam Olens now launches.

Had she won her 1988 race for the Public Service Commission, Steinberg would have been the first woman and the first Jew to win partisan statewide office. The first woman, former state School Superintendent Linda Schrenko, came six years later.

Olens, a Republican, toyed briefly with running for governor, but opted for attorney general.

Whether her religion was a factor in her loss 21 years ago is conjecture —- though it can be. Mitt Romney, a Mormon, lost Georgia last year to both Mike Huckabee and John McCain. Huckabee got clobbered in Atlanta; Romney got clobbered in much of rural Georgia, where his vote dropped by 10 percentage points or more. Religion —- or something else?

Steinberg, a 10-year state representative from DeKalb County in 1988, still has harsh feelings about her runoff loss to former state Sen. Bobby Rowan of Enigma, a longtime Georgia political figure, a rural moderate who at age 26 in 1962 had become the youngest state senator ever elected.”Anti-semitism, from the time I started to run, was always less than I thought it would be,” recalls Steinberg, a native of Kingston, Pa., who moved to Atlanta in 1971. But she thought the Rowan campaign, while never referring to religion, had appealed to Southern prejudices by attempting to link her with the New York, liberal Jewish wing of the party personified by former Rep. Bella Abzug.

A newspaper ad, for example, said she had attended Carnegie-Mellon University in New York —- it’s actually in Pittsburgh —- and added, for good measure, that she sponsored legislation “legalizing whiskey on Sunday.”

Southern Jews and Northern Jews would, at the time, elicit entirely different reactions. Small Southern towns have a rich tradition of Jewish merchant families, like that of former Board of Regents Chairman Charles A. Harris of Ocilla, now deceased, or the Mooneys in Jesup, the Wisebrams in Barnesville, the Steins in Cartersville, the Cohens in Alma or the Smiths in Vidalia. Merchant families assimilated and became respected leaders in their communities, as the Rich’s department store family did here.

While Mormons were never prominent in the state, Southern Jews were.

Steinberg, as she says, “was clearly a Yankee, Jewish person. I had a Yankee accent and a heavy voice.” As is often the case, any number of factors, including gender, utility politics and her identification as a metro Atlanta liberal, were also in play. Olens’ style is much more in the Southern tradition. He works extraordinarily hard to make political friends across the spectrum, neutralizes opposition before it takes root, and runs Cobb without drama.

His story will resonate with all who have overcome adversity. He’s a native of Miami, where his father co-owned an auto repair business. His mother died when he was 5. His father moved Sam and an older brother and sister to South Jersey, where he operated a one-truck wholesale auto parts business.

When he was 12, his father died. An aunt and uncle took him in. The uncle died when he was 14.

After getting a bachelor’s and a master’s degree from American University in Washington, he came to Emory University for law school in 1980. He practiced full-time until 2002 when he was elected Cobb County Commission chairman.

Jim Wooten is associate editorial page editor. Reach him at jwooten@ajc.com.