Greg Rodgers has changed his mind.
A few days after choosing Karen Handel in a phone poll conducted for the Georgia Newspaper Partnership, 49-year-old Rodgers of Pine Mountain says he’ll be voting for Nathan Deal on Tuesday in the Georgia Republican gubernatorial runoff.
“I just don’t like the negative campaign Handel has been running,” said Rodgers, whose family is in the steel fabrication business.
Just days before the runoff, Handel holds a slight edge over Deal in the GOP race for governor, according to a new statewide poll.
Handel leads Deal 47 percent to 42 percent with 11 percent undecided, and the two are battling for downstate voters who supported someone else in the July 20 primary.
The race for the Republican nomination has been a bruising campaign that has garnered national attention through high-profile endorsements from GOP stalwarts such as former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who is supporting Handel, and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who endorsed Deal.
It all ends Tuesday, as GOP voters pick a candidate to face Democratic nominee Roy Barnes in November.
While Handel leads overall, the poll found that Deal gets nearly a majority — 48 percent — of support from voters who backed a losing candidate in the primary. Those voters, who backed former state Sen. Eric Johnson, state Insurance Commissioner John Oxendine or one of the three other candidates in the primary, could be the key to Tuesday’s vote, said Brad Coker, managing director of Mason-Dixon Polling & Research, which conducted the poll.
“Deal really needs to get those Oxendine voters back and the Johnson voters back to the polls and convince them to vote for him,” Coker said.
The question is whether those voters are motivated enough to make another trip to the polls. Coker said he would expect fewer than half of all primary voters to return Tuesday and those who supported Handel or Deal are the most likely to vote again.
In the primary, Handel led with 34 percent of the vote, followed by Deal with 23 percent. Johnson took 20 percent and Oxendine, 17 percent.
The poll shows Handel, the former secretary of state, dominating her home base of metro Atlanta, while Deal did especially well in North Georgia, much of which he represented in Congress for 18 years. But in South Georgia Johnson and Oxendine had their best showing, making voters from that region a key for Tuesday’s runoff.
“That belt running from Augusta to Savannah and all the way to Columbus and through Macon — that’s where the race is going to be decided,” Coker said.
Both campaigns said Saturday the new poll offers good news.
“It’s clear that the people of Georgia are rejecting Congressman Deal’s negative attacks on Karen,” Handel spokesman Dan McLagan said. “We feel a momentum.”
Deal spokesman Brian Robinson said the results show Deal keeping pace with Handel.
“Nathan Deal is neck and neck with Karen Handel after suffering two weeks of withering, reckless, false attacks,” he said. “It shows what direction the race is moving. If those undecideds who voted for someone else break along the line they already have, we’re sitting really pretty.”
Robinson also noted the poll was already under way when Huckabee endorsed Deal on Thursday, and said his man’s bid has gotten a boost from the 2008 presidential candidate’s support. Huckabee will rally voters for Deal today in Gainesville, while Palin visits Atlanta on Handel’s behalf on Monday.
But the poll doesn’t indicate that endorsements by Palin, Huckabee, former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who is supporting Deal, or former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who endorsed Handel, are having a big impact.
When those polled were asked the most important reason they were supporting a candidate, only 9 percent of Handel supporters and 8 percent of Deal supporters said it was because of endorsements.
Issues driving voters to polls
Meanwhile, poll respondents cited the economy and jobs as the top issue driving them to the polls Tuesday.
Rodgers said government spending is the main issue in the campaign: “We’ve got to get our house in order. We can’t keep spending the way we have. We need to look at what we are spending money on and see what is really needed.”
But he also believes Deal would do a better job dealing with illegal immigration in Georgia, something he called a “big problem.”
Joseph Zitzelberger, a 41-year-old computer programmer in Columbus, said he’s sticking with Handel.
“They are really about identical on about every major issue,” he said of the candidates.
He doesn’t like that Deal resigned from Congress, forcing a special election to replace him.
“He could have saved the state a lot of money if he had just not run for re-election in 2008,” Zitzelberger said. “I think he already knew he was going to run for governor.”
Zitzelberger thinks the most important issue in the 2010 campaign is reducing government spending.
“The way that money is being spent just has to be addressed by the next governor,” he said. “I think Handel will do that.”
Susan Welch, 59, of Americus, Ga., has been a teacher for more than 30 years. She is supporting Deal.
“I have liked him for a long time,” Welch said. “He is a Christian. He’s fair and very concerned about the citizens. He thinks with his heart.”
She has heard that he has been accused by some of unethical behavior while in Congress.
“There’s been a lot of hoopla about illegal things but I trust him,” she said.
In the poll, she said her No. 1 reason for supporting Deal is his position on social issues such as abortion and gay rights, and she thinks the No. 1 issue is the economy.
“I really don’t know that much about Karen Handel,” Welch said. “I know that Georgia needs jobs and I believe that Deal with the knowledge he has from working in Washington is the person to get industry here.”
This story is provided through the Georgia Newspaper Partnership. Aaron Gould Sheinin and Steve Visser of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution contributed to this report.
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