Nathan Deal teared up when I told him the story. I had patronized a Gainesville jewelry store to replace the worn-out band on my wristwatch.
The owner asked, “Are you the Brian Robinson working on Nathan Deal’s campaign?” “I am,” I said. The man pointed to a woman behind the counter. “That’s my daughter. Jason Deal saved her life.” Jason, son of the governor and first lady, is a Superior Court judge who heads up the drug courts in Hall and Dawson counties. “She got in trouble with drugs. The court took my granddaughter from her. Judge Deal gave her a chance to get treatment. Now she’s sober, has her daughter back and is working here.”
A smarter approach to drug addicts ensnared in our legal system had literally saved this woman’s life, and I’m learning about it from a grateful father and grandfather trying to hold back tears.
Nathan Deal always has an emotional response to anecdotes like this. I knew back in 2010 that he was interested in his son’s drug court work. He loved the uplifting stories from drug court graduation – though he can’t tell you about individual cases because he can’t even get to the end of his first sentence without breaking down.
After he won the election, he wrote his inaugural address himself while I began drafting his first state of the state address. I thought we'd just talk about the issues that we had run on, which included tough legislation on illegal immigration and a tax cut. I asked him for his thoughts. I didn't understand what he meant when he said "the crime issue," or as he says it, "the crime ishah."
“What crime issue?” I asked. He explained. Oh great, I thought, after running all year as an unwavering, staunch conservative, the first thing we’re going to do is make sure criminals spend less time in prison? As a political operative, I worried that it would take just take one meth-fueled murder by someone in a diversion program to set us up for a Willie Horton-type attack during the re-election.
Deal took office in the deepest, darkest depths of the Great Recession, and he had to immediately cut budgets that had already been sliced to the bone. Our prisons were full and he learned we needed to build a new one with a price tag of $265 million.
When the first criminal justice reform bill passed that year – with no opposition – the need for that expenditure disappeared.
With each passing year, Gov. Deal added to those reforms, blazing a trail that now provides a national model. It didn’t take long before the state’s prison population stabilized and then shrank. The number of African-American men in state prisons declined to historic lows. Crime rates in the state fell. And there was no Willie Horton story.
Nathan Deal is proud of those stats. But he lights up when he talks about the stories behind those numbers.
One little known fact about the Governor’s Mansion is that it’s staffed during the day by inmates, all of whom committed violent crimes. By the time they get Mansion duty, they’re near the end of their prison terms.
And Nathan Deal loves them. When their release date nears, he calls friends to find them jobs – and he’s even been known to help them get cars if they need a way to get to that new job.
Once, I was with the governor when he was speaking to Rotarians at a country club in Albany. Before he would go into the ballroom to greet the community’s movers and shakers, he first insisted on going to the kitchen, where one of the former Mansion inmates had his first job as a cook. They both beamed with pride.
Because of Nathan Deal’s vision, courage and compassion, there are stories like that all over Georgia today. People who a generation ago would have rotted in prison instead get the treatment they need. They stay with their families. They continue to work and contribute to our economy.
This "ishah" wasn't an abandonment of conservative values. It was an embrace of them. It was about saving tax dollars while getting better outcomes. It was about the intrinsic value of every human life. It was about redemption.
Our state seal encourages Wisdom, Justice and Moderation. Nathan Deal embodies those values, not to mention his humility, compassion and high character.
Deal’s compassion for Georgians on the margins of our society didn’t stop with addicts or the mentally ill in our criminal justice system. It extended to poor children trapped in failing schools or those with autism in need of life-changing therapy, those with health conditions who needed cannabis oil to ease their pain, and high-achieving high school students in need of a scholarship to become the first members of their families to go to college.
The people of Georgia wisely placed him at the table of the mighty, but he always made room for the meek. Working in his shadow provided me with the honor of my life. Godspeed, boss.
Brian Robinson was spokesman for Gov. Nathan Deal from 2010-2015.
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