State School Superintendent John Barge always faced long odds in his quest to unseat Gov. Nathan Deal, but developments over the past month laid bare just how steep his challenge will be.
The governor’s proposed education funding surge saps Barge of one of his campaign selling points. Finance records show he’s barely topped $100,000 in donations in a race that already nears $10 million. And two other Deal challengers are sucking up attention and planting themselves in the political spectrum to Deal’s left and right.
In short, Barge now confronts the possibility of running a campaign with no clear constituency, nearly bare campaign coffers and an almost single-minded focus on education that’s at risk of being co-opted by rivals.
With the May 20 primary less than four months away, Barge says he is working to fine-tune his messages on economic development and health care to avoid being a one-chord candidate. And he says he can force a runoff with a coalition of educators and grass-roots conservatives peeved at Deal’s tenure.
“I’m here because I believe I can win,” he said in an interview in his North Georgia farmhouse. “And without raising millions of dollars, we still believe our message will resonate enough to win this election.”
Barge’s education-first platform and his strained relations with Deal added a level of intrigue to what was widely seen as a cakewalk re-election campaign for the governor. But since then Dalton Mayor David Pennington has firmly seized the ground to Deal’s right while Democrat Jason Carter has energized his party with a challenge from the left.
That’s left Barge struggling with both message and money against a powerful incumbent who last week proposed an increase of more than $500 million in k-12 spending, partly to neutralize education funding as an issue in the coming campaign.
His rivals denounced the move as an election-year ploy, and Carter quickly unveiled a proposal for a separate education budget that would be protected from tinkering legislators. But despite Barge’s broadsides asserting that years of cuts to Georgia’s education funding formula need to be reversed, he’s yet to enunciate a clear plan to do so.
He’s backed off an idea to funnel money from the state’s rainy day fund toward education and rejected the notion of raising taxes. Instead, he said he would look at “inefficiencies in state government” such as overlapping duties between the governor’s office and the Labor Department. But even those savings, he says, are a drop in the ocean that is Georgia’s budget of more than $20 billion.
“We need to look at our entire tax structure and whether we can spend the money we generate differently so it’s not a matter of raising taxes,” he said in the interview.
His fundraising troubles don’t make matters easier. He was never a prolific fundraiser — Barge only raised about $110,000 for his 2010 race — but the high-profile governor’s contest has fast become a race for cash. Deal has about $4 million on hand while Carter has roughly $1 million. Pennington, the Dalton mayor, has raised almost quadruple Barge’s amount.
The brunt of the superintendent's support comes from family and close friends, along with a $15,000 check Barge wrote to himself. His biggest donation is a $20,000 check from a Duluth-based foundation with ties to the Education Department whose owner is said to be a good friend of the candidate's. Barge said he was surprised how difficult it was to raise funds.
“People said they were afraid to write us a check. They were afraid of retaliation by the governor if they supported us,” Barge said. “There are state legislators who I know support me, but their response is that they’re trying to find a way to do it but they don’t want to harm their district. They worry about projects being funded.”
Deal’s campaign declined to address the accusations, saying only that the governor was focused on “solving problems and finding solutions.”
The undercurrent of ongoing tensions between Deal and Barge is impossible to ignore.
The two fell out after Barge opposed a ballot measure to give the state new powers to create charter schools. Deal and most of the state's Republican establishment supported the constitutional amendment, which was overwhelmingly approved, and infighting between the two camps has since raged behind the scenes.
Those tensions still burn, but Barge said his campaign is not a personal vendetta against the governor.
“I don’t have any personal agendas other than bettering the conditions for the state of Georgia,” he said. “I’ve made my career out of teaching and service, and I didn’t come from money or power is not a motivating factor. My first concern when I talked about running was, ‘Do I really have to stay in the mansion if I win?’ ”
Still, he’s confronted the possibility that if the May elections don’t go his way he’ll return to his Kingston home, a fixer-upper on a quiet plot of land where he raises two horses. And if that happens, and Deal prevails, will he endorse the governor against a Democratic challenge?
“I would say no,” Barge said flatly. “I would have to withhold any endorsements.”
About the Author
