State GOP chair: Nathan Deal’s vetoes ‘fairly unpopular here’

Oscar Poole (foreground) during last year’s Georgia Republican party convention in Athens. Hyosub Shin, hshin@ajc.com

Credit: Jim Galloway

Credit: Jim Galloway

Oscar Poole (foreground) during last year’s Georgia Republican party convention in Athens. Hyosub Shin, hshin@ajc.com

John Padgett, chairman of the Georgia Republican party, was on the horn this morning with Tim Bryant of WGAU (1340AM) in Athens, discussing this weekend's state GOP convention in Augusta.

In a discussion of the gathering’s likely reaction to Gov. Nathan Deal’s vetoes of a “religious liberty” measure and a campus-carry bill, Padgett drew a distinction between your average Republican voter and a GOP convention-goer.

Deal, he implied, may be in trouble with the latter, but not the former.  Bryant has kindly sent us the audio. Listen here:

A quick transcript:

"It's a pretty conservative group, and those two issues were very conservative issues.  With the veto, it just didn't go the way that the people at the Capitol and a good portion of our base would have wanted it to go.

"The governor had his reasons for doing it, and he would tell you if you look at the polls, generally across the state, they were about a 50-50 [issue].  But I don't know who they were polling.  I can tell you they were not popular vetoes here with this convention."