Deal travels Georgia on eve of runoff

Gubernatorial hopeful Nathan Deal stumped in south and Middle Georgia on Monday in a last-day pitch to voters who will decide Tuesday which Republican lines up against Roy Barnes in November.

"I go around the state of Georgia. I don't go to a four-star hotel in Buckhead," said Deal in a slap at his rival Karen Handel when he was speaking to supporters in Albany. Handel was campaigning Monday with her star endorser Sarah Palin, the 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee, at an event in Atlanta.

Deal hoped his seven-stop tour aboard his campaign chairman's single-prop Pilatus PC12 would generate enough free media in places like Columbus, Albany, Macon and Savannah to give him a bump in turnout in Tuesday's GOP runoff election.

The area was strong for GOP candidates John Oxendine and Eric Johnson in the July primary, and a recent poll shows their supporters trending toward Deal, a former congressman from Gainesville who represented much of North Georgia. The events are pure media affairs with news conferences inside the terminals of regional airports, designed to get Deal on the evening news. Campaign aides carry bundles of "Deal. Real." T-shirts to hand out and campaign signs for supporters to hold while they stand behind Deal when he speaks to the cameras.

Deal is counting on his strong support from the Republican leadership to defeat Handel, a north Fulton Republican and former Georgia secretary of state, who is focusing on metro Atlanta, which has about half the Republican votes. State Republican legislators and U.S. Rep. Phil Gingrey, R-Marietta, met Deal at DeKalb-Peachtree Airport, and U.S. Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, whose 3rd Congressional District runs from Columbus suburbs to Atlanta suburbs, met him in Columbus. Georgia House Speaker Pro Tem Jan Jones, R-Milton, was on the campaign plane.

"I don't think Sarah Palin would know Karen Handel if she got into a cab with her," said Westmoreland, who contended Handel didn't represent Georgia's social conservative values.

Jones, who said she supported Handel in her races for the Fulton County Commission and Georgia secretary of state, contended Deal would make a far better governor, citing his experience in local and national politics and business.

She said even his auto salvage business was a plus, despite the fact that it has brought an ethical cloud over his campaign. The company made $300,000 a year from the state for performing safety certifications for salvaged vehicles. According to a bipartisan ethics committee, when Georgia officials decided to end the relationship, Deal improperly used his congressional office to try to keep the business.

"He's been on both sides of a paycheck," Jones said. "It matters who is governor, and it matters what your qualifications are."

Deal contends that Handel has put forth only attack ads -- questioning his ethics -- rather than any proposals on how she would govern. The state, he said, has tough times ahead economically and politically.

He said if elected, he plans to push cutting the corporate taxes from 6 percent to 4 percent for all companies and exempting startup companies from corporate taxation until they are established, which he contends would make the state have one of the most attractive tax rates in the Southeast.

In terms of the water dispute involving the Chattahoochee River with Florida and Alabama, which threatens growth in metro Atlanta, he said that the state has to do more with conservation and water treatment to put it in a better bargaining position.