Deal relies on his experience in pursuit of re-election

Education: Bachelor of Arts, Mercer University, 1964; law degree, Mercer University, 1966.

Work experience: U.S. Army, 1966-1968; prosecutor; juvenile court judge; state senator 1980-1992; U.S. House member, 1992-2010; governor, 2011-present.

Family: Married with four children and six grandchildren.

Highlights as governor

2011: Engineered changes to HOPE scholarship that reduced award amounts and tightened eligibility requirements to cut expenses.

2011: Signed a sweeping immigration crackdown into law.

2011-2014: Championed a criminal justice overhaul aimed at keeping low-level offenders out of prison.

2013: Signed a package of ethics legislation into law that set a cap on lobbyist spending and required more fundraising disclosures.

2014: Signed legislation to expand where Georgians can legally carry firearms.

2014: Signed a federal agreement to begin deepening Savannah’s port.

Gov. Nathan Deal last suffered an election defeat in the 1970s in a contest to preside over the local chapter of the Jaycees. He tells that story not to suggest his re-election next week is inevitable — his streak has come perilously close to ending before — but to reinforce his public record as he wages his final campaign.

The governor is leaning on that experience to guide his campaign in the increasingly bitter, and surprisingly close, contest against Jason Carter, a two-term state senator from Atlanta who is a scion of the most politically connected Democratic family in Georgia.

The winner inherits a conservative state rocked by demographic changes that have Democrats dreaming of a resurgence. That’s why Deal, 72, emphasizes his four decades in public service, a stretch longer than Carter has been alive.

The change-vs.-experience story line is not new. But it has manifested itself in a brutally sharp way in this contest. Carter depicts the governor as an uninspiring leader with a humdrum agenda. Deal says his track record — from prosecutor to judge to legislator to governor — forms a foundation that his 39-year-old rival cannot match.

Deal has struggled to hide his frustration with Carter as November nears. Deal’s Democratic opponent four years ago was Roy Barnes, a former governor who built a distinguished political career. He views Carter, by contrast, as a “backbencher” in the state Senate who spent four years in office testing the political winds.

“It’s hard to debate against a ghost. He has no substance,” Deal said in an interview, adding: “He spent four years with his finger in the political winds trying to decide what’s best for his political future. Unlike me and unlike Roy Barnes. We have something to show for our time in the General Assembly.”

A win streak

Fresh out of law school and a stint in the U.S. Army, Deal moved to Gainesville in the 1960s and embraced the strain of conservative Democratic politics that then dominated Georgia. He supported Jimmy Carter, the rising-star Georgia governor (and grandfather of his November opponent) and was elected to the state Senate in 1980 as a Democrat.

He was a relatively quiet partisan in his 12 years at the statehouse, rarely giving fiery speeches during an era of vicious intraparty infighting, but he led the busy Judiciary Committee and rose to serve as the chamber’s pro tem his final four years.

He remained a Democrat when first elected to Congress in 1992, but he bucked the party line a year later when he voted against a proposed tax increase and President Bill Clinton’s budget. He switched parties in 1995, amid a GOP wave across the South, forever endearing himself to then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

Deal rarely was the subject of Sunday talk show fodder during his tenure in Congress. But he played a quiet role as chairman of a House health subcommittee in helping to cut billions of dollars in spending with bills that required Medicaid recipients to prove they were U.S. citizens.

He surprised many when he abandoned his relatively low-profile Washington persona to join the crowded race to succeed Gov. Sonny Perdue. That’s also when his streak of relatively easy political wins came to a halt.

An Atlanta Journal-Constitution investigation in 2009 revealed he intervened with state officials to try to keep a lucrative no-bid agreement with the state for an auto salvage yard he co-owned. House ethics investigators found he may have violated congressional rules, but he resigned from Congress to run for governor before a separate probe could begin.

More ethics concerns surfaced over the next five years. There were claims of improper payments to a firm owned by an aide’s wife, questions about his sale of the salvage yard to a company locked in a tax dispute with the state and whistleblowers who alleged his administration interfered with a state ethics probe into his 2010 campaign.

Deal was cleared of any major violations in the 2010 campaign complaints, and he has denied any wrongdoing in the other cases, often citing the political motivations of his critics. His win streak, meanwhile, remained intact. He eked out a victory over Karen Handel in a bitter 2010 GOP runoff and defeated Barnes months later. This May, he cruised past two GOP contenders.

Handel, who this month endorsed her former fierce rival, said Deal was a political survivor who was “magnanimous” in victory.

“Governor Deal has done a good job,” she said. “And when we look at the next four years, the question is, do we want to have the steady hand of experience and maturity or do we want to pass off to someone who is inexperienced?”

A weighty decision

In his first months in office, Deal threw his office’s weight behind a push to overhaul the HOPE scholarship, the popular lottery-funded program that couldn’t keep pace with growing demand.

His plan cut award amounts and tightened eligibility, a move Deal and his supporters cast as a bold decision that saved the program from bankruptcy. Thousands of students lost the scholarship as a result of the changes, and Carter blames the move for destroying the scholarship’s central promise.

It echoes many of Carter’s complaints about the governor. He says Deal hasn’t done enough to fund public schools, and that his philosophy on economic development has been a “grab bag” of perks that ignore the middle class. At the center of his argument, though, is a contention that Deal lacks vision and drive to solve Georgia’s problems.

Deal and his supporters point to a solidly conservative record similar to other Southern Republicans. He’s backed abortion restrictions, signed a gun rights expansion into law and steadfastly refused to expand Medicaid. His tax proposals offer incentives to big firms and sectors such as Georgia’s film industry.

Yet his biggest legislative achievement — one that even his fiercest critics are reluctant to criticize — wasn’t in the GOP playbook. Deal, who didn’t talk much about the state’s high incarceration rates in his 2010 campaign, made reworking the criminal justice system the cornerstone of his legislative agenda.

The three-part overhaul is designed to keep lower-level offenders out of prison and smooth inmates' transition once they are released, and it has helped shave prison costs and reduce backlogs. It was a stunning departure from the tough-on-crime initiatives championed by conservatives in Georgia and elsewhere.

“It was the right thing to do. In spite of what my opponent might say about not having vision and courage, that took both vision and courage,” Deal said. “And it required a willingness to listen.”

State Sen. Fran Millar, a Dunwoody Republican, called Deal’s support for the proposals, which passed with little opposition, a gutty win from a “guy who has been tested, who has proven results on a bipartisan basis — working across the aisle.”

Ties that bind

On the campaign trail, Deal can sound like a relentlessly sunny optimist. His jobs plan has helped create more than 300,000 new positions, he says on the stump, before pledging that another term will yield greater dividends. His pledges are more modest than Carter’s far-reaching goals, but Deal says they are also more realistic.

In private, he cuts a far different persona. He is more likely to chat with his wife, Sandra, or reflect in silence than seek the spotlight. Those closest to him describe an introverted man hardened by his years in public office.

“We do have a lot of wisdom, we think, and the experiences of life we can offer to this position,” Sandra Deal said, adding: “Wisdom helps in knowing where and how to do things.”

He is also deeply loyal to the cadre of aides who have surrounded him for years, and in some cases, decades. He supported the head of Georgia’s Emergency Management Agency despite the state’s lackluster response to January’s icy gridlock, and he stood by two other aides amid allegations they sought to influence an ethics probe.

When a 25-year-old field operative died in a car crash this month, Deal canceled many of his campaign events for days and mourned with the family at the funeral.

As he enters the final stretch of his final campaign, he sometimes ponders the Jaycees election he lost four decades ago. He had recently moved to Gainesville, and his opponent — now a good friend — had been involved in the organization for years.

Did he learn any lessons from that last defeat that would come in handy now?

“It wasn’t the problem that I face today,” Deal said with a chuckle. “My opponent in that race was a better qualified person.”