Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is the last candidate standing among the quartet of chief executives that Gov. Nathan Deal backed for president last year. But ask the Georgia Republican how actively he'll support Bush in the run-up to March 1 and he gives anything but a full-throated endorsement.
The reason centers on the exhausting regional battle over water rights that has divided Georgia, Florida and Alabama for more than two decades. Deal said in an interview that he anticipates a very "pointed" discussion with Bush on that very topic as the race shifts to Georgia and other Southern states.
"It's important for me that I know where potential candidates stand on important issues to Georgia," Deal said. "If Iowa gets to ask presidential candidates where they stand on ethanol, the state of Georgia ought to ask where they stand on water issues."
Georgia won a string of recent court victories in the long-running fight with Florida and Alabama over water rights, but the streak was snapped in 2014 when the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a last-ditch legal maneuver by Florida seeking to limit Georgia's water withdrawals from the Chattahoochee River to 1992 levels.
The state has so far spent $20 million on lawyers to fight over the litigation – on top of $20 million previously spent over the last 25 years. Georgia has tasked a small army of attorneys – about 70 at last count – who have pored over 4 million documents and at least 660,000 emails produced by Florida in the case.
"Since Gov. Bush was the governor of Florida, and since the state of Florida is now costing the state of Georgia millions of dollars in defending their lawsuit against us in the Supreme Court, it's important to understand that if he's elected president, where he stands on being fair to the citizens of Georgia in regards to water issues," said Deal.
He has harsher words for Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who joined with Alabama's two Republican senators in November to criticize the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers "mismanagement" of the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint river basin and urged that both states be shielded from any shenanigans in the pending appropriations bill.
"I'm very disappointed in what we've already seen from Senator Rubio on that very subject," Deal said, saying the failed attempt by Rubio and the Alabama lawmakers would have been a "significant detriment" to Georgia's water supply.
"I have concerns about that. I let him know that I have concerns about that. He has not shown me the respect of even calling me to say why he did it," Deal said in the interview.
"There may explanations that he can offer, but I think he deserves to offer the state of Georgia answers in that. I don't think we want a president who is going to take undue sides in settling disputes between the three states."
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