‘Religious liberty’ veto could be turning point for Georgia governor

The veto, which defied religious conservatives and averted corporate boycotts, could well wind up being the defining moment of his eight years in office. For the remainder of his term, he may have to navigate fallout from Republicans who want to accelerate his lame-duck status.

That fallout has begun even before Deal announces whether he will sign or veto another of the Republican General Assembly's hot-button bills of the 2016 session: "campus carry" legislation that would allow permit holders to carry guns on the campuses of Georgia's public colleges and universities.

“There’s no doubt he’s lost the trust of the party’s base. The governor has definitely lost standing,” said state Sen. Josh McKoon, the Columbus Republican who has been one of the most ardent champions of the legislation. “People are very upset, and you’re going to see strong pushback from grass-roots elements in the Republican Party.”

First comes the campaigns for the May 24 primaries, when Republican voters in many districts will hear incumbents and contenders rail against Deal’s veto. Then comes a June meeting of the Georgia GOP, where supporters of the legislation are already planning a show of force.

And looming large is next year’s legislative session, when Deal is expected to unveil a sweeping education overhaul — the biggest item left on his to-do list — that could be at risk.

And yet, the governor still holds the ultimate trump card, with the power to frame Georgia's budget — and the final say over what goes in it. His allies say he still has the political juice to push through his priorities. And they say many Republican lawmakers who reluctantly supported House Bill 757, the religious liberty measure, quietly rejoiced when he vetoed it because of the damage some predicted it would do to Georgia' economy.

“I don’t see it as a complete negative. It’s not going to help relations, but I’m not convinced that it’s going to devastate their relations,” said Brian Robinson, a former top Deal deputy. “A lot of the criticism he now faces he was going to face anyways. It’s part of being a second-term governor. The buzzards start swirling as soon as you get sworn to another term.”

Changing conditions

This was not supposed to be how it played out for Deal, who avoided past votes on the debate largely through backroom negotiations. It took a complicated chain of events last year to block religious liberty legislation, including two holdout House Republicans who voted for a compromise plan in subcommittees — one of whom Deal appointed to a judgeship right after the session.

This year, though, there was no buffer. Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, long a reliable ally of business boosters and a likely candidate for governor in 2018, emerged as one of the strongest advocates of the measure, which would have allowed faith-based organizations to deny services to others based on “sincerely held religious beliefs.”

And House Speaker David Ralston, facing his own Republican primary challenge, went from echoing some of Deal's concerns about the measure to declaring that the cascade of critics rallying against it were exaggerating.

In an interview last week, both Ralston and Cagle said they agreed with Deal on far more than they disagreed with him, and they talked vividly of the close ties between their offices. Yet, they also remained firm in their vow to revive the “religious liberty” debate next year.

“I would hope that everybody can take a deep breath and tone down the rhetoric on both sides, frankly, and let’s see if we can reach a consensus on a solution,” Ralston said. “I share some concerns that the issue is just not going away.”

Faced with a tide of big-name corporations urging him to veto the measure — blue-chip brand names such as Apple, Disney and Time Warner — the governor rooted his veto in his Southern Baptist beliefs.

“I do not think we have to discriminate against anyone to protect the faith-based community,” Deal said.

In many ways, though, the backlash facing Deal has been building since his re-election. His pro-business platform helped him win another term, but it came at a time when many grass-roots GOP activists recoil at the words "chamber of commerce" and anti-establishment billionaire Donald Trump was the top vote-getter in the state's GOP presidential primary.

Shortly after winning a tough re-election campaign, he announced his support for a nearly $1 billion mix of taxes and fee hikes to shore up the state's aging infrastructure. And the range of special-interest tax breaks that passed with his support — including incentives for Mercedes-Benz executives, Super Bowl ticket purchases — didn't resonate with the base.

“Look at the last two years. How can you tell the difference between a General Assembly run by Republicans and Governor Deal from Democratic-controlled Georgia? Where is the stark philosophical divide?” McKoon said. “I don’t see it.”

Second-term blues

What Deal faces could, in many ways, be predicted. Other second-term governors have faced challenges from within.

Gov. Zell Miller and House Speaker Tom Murphy, both Democrats and longtime political rivals, publicly chastised each other’s priorities in 1996 and 1997 when the governor was pushing changes to the welfare system, cutting Medicaid and backing tougher drunken driving laws.

A decade later, the state’s first Republican governor since Reconstruction, Sonny Perdue, had just routed Democratic opposition for a second term when he started the 2007 session by asking the General Assembly to spend $19 million on his fishing tourism and education program called “Go Fish Georgia.” Cagle, elected the year before, and some leading lawmakers rolled their eyes over the plan, and it didn’t have an easy time winning General Assembly approval.

Perdue also quickly shot down a proposal that was popular among many lawmakers that would let voters decide whether to allow beer, wine and liquor sales at grocery stores and other locations on Sundays. That legislation didn’t pass until Deal became governor in 2011.

At the end of the 2007 session, then-House Speaker Glenn Richardson, a volatile exurban Republican, won support for a property tax rebate, but Perdue vetoed the mid-year budget that contained it. A furious Richardson led the House to vote to override the veto on the last day of the session and banned the governor's staff from the House floor, but Cagle's Senate wouldn't go along with the House.

Perdue later undid the midyear budget veto but nixed the tax cut. And he responded by vetoing 41 bills and $130 million in spending, in some cases making key cuts in the districts of House leaders.

The next session started with the House voting to override a dozen of Perdue's vetoes, but again, the Senate wouldn't go along with them. It later symbolically voted to override his veto on a minor bill. By the end of the 2008 session, candidates were ready to crank up the 2010 governor's race, and Perdue left office with some legislative leaders more than happy to see him go.

Among those with a testy relationship with Perdue was then-House Appropriations Chairman Ben Harbin, an Augusta-area Republican who saw the governor veto funding for a local museum in 2007. He said such second-term troubles are natural for governors, who cannot by law run for a third term.

“In the second term, the governor is becoming more and more of a lame duck every year, and it’s a natural part of the process because there is an expiration date on the governor, and most members of the Legislature think they will be there forever,” Harbin said. “The Legislature becomes more and more emboldened because they know the governor will be gone in a few years. That is when the Legislature is back at its strength. They are willing to stand up a little more often.”

John Watson, Perdue’s chief of staff during his first term, said governors also evolve over time and feel free to act without the pressure of having to run for re-election. That puts less pressure on them to act on issues without having to worry about how it will play in a re-election campaign. However, Watson, now a Capitol lobbyist, expects Deal to maintain a decent relationship with legislative leaders, despite the religious liberty veto.

“I think there was going to be incremental changes in the relationship, with or without the (religious liberty) legislation,” Watson said. “But there are other issues. This governor has enjoyed a good relationship with the General Assembly, and no single issue is going to define that relationship.”

Yet the strains will almost certainly get deeper. Cagle said he’s ready to start a “new chapter” next year — one with another renewed effort to push through a religious liberty bill that has divided the Legislature the past three legislative sessions.

“I would not say there’s going to be more friction. That’s a very clear statement. But with that being said, you cannot deny there are very, very strong emotions tied specifically to this bill,” he said. “And unlike vetoing a road project or an innocuous bill, this is something that people have very, very deep and strong feelings around.

“It clearly does have the potential to create more conflict.”