The Lesser of Two Evils: The Georgia Governor’s Race

After Nathan Deal won the Republican primary just two months ago, anyone would have thought he had the governor’s race in the bag. He had overcome his biggest hurdle, Karen Handel, and with a win of less than one percent of the vote, gotten very lucky. His luck stopped there though and only a couple of weeks after the win it came out that he has about five million dollars of debt that he left off the disclosure forms. This comes after the fact that he was already involved in an Office of Congressional Ethics investigation, regarding reports that he was pressuring Georgia officials to keep a state vehicle inspection program that benefited his automobile salvage company. This is the same automobile salvage company that he has an unpaid $2.5 million dollar loan out on.  Now the whole race has been turned on its head and is becoming a race about choosing the lesser of two evils. No one thought Roy Barnes had a chance in hell and now he is only trailing Deal by about 4 points. The press has christened the race, “King Roy vs. Shady Deal.” Whilst giving Deal the titles of, “one of the fifteen most corrupt members of Congress” and “Georgia’s Christine O’Donnell.”

Both sides are now engaged in a pretty nasty ad war. Deal has been trying to put Barnes in the same boat as Obama and has his friend Dale Peterson, the former candidate for the Alabama agriculture Commissioner, helping him out. Peterson claims in one TV ad that Barnes sounds like the president when he is going around apologizing for all his past mistakes as former governor. Barnes, on the other hand, has ads calling Deal, “as slippery as a bag of snakes” and too corrupt even for Congress. Barnes claims in one ad that he requires no on the job training, while Deal is trying to make Barnes’ former governorship seem like a nightmare. Both are mudslinging like nobody’s business and making national headlines while doing so. Everyone from the New York Times to the Associated Press is watching this election very closely.

Does Deal deserve this large of a backlash for his financial woes? Well it all depends on who you talk to. The Republican’s are saying that the recession is to blame for his losses and that these financial hardships are only making Deal more sympathetic to business owners who are going through the same things in these tough times. He was just a father trying to help his child out like any parent would. While the Democrat’s are using the argument that if his personal finances are so bad then there is no way he can run the state’s finances and if he is lying about personal finances then what else could he be lying about. A good parent might pay for a child’s college tuition, not sign for a $2 million dollar loan. The Democrat’s seem pretty confident in their argument though, since the Democratic Governor’s Association just poured $1 million into Barnes’s campaign.

This is a time when the Republican’s should easily be sweeping elections and filling offices. Especially in a red state like Georgia, and yet Deal has still managed to put the governorship in question. I am sure that the Republican’s are kicking themselves in the behind now for not electing Karen Handel in the primaries. This race could have been a cake walk for them if she had won the vote. Sure, you cannot go back and change what happened but when you are involved in a race that should be as easily won as this one, maybe you should go with a safe candidate instead of one who was already involved in an ethics investigation.  Deal was just a ticking time bomb. Democrats are the party in control and the country is in a recession with the president’s approval rating on a downward spiral and the unemployment rate at 9.5%. Yet, the Republican’s STILL cannot secure the governor’s race in a RED state. That is just embarrassing.

This is going to be an interesting race to watch and I know I will definitely be at the polls on November 2^nd to cast my ballot. I honestly do not know who will come out the winner. Will more scandals be unearthed before Election Day? Nothing would surprise me at this point…. The winner is going to come from who can get the 13% of undecided voters to side with them. As I said before, I think that a lot of people, including the undecided voters, feel that this race is about choosing the lesser of two evils. Go ahead and pick your poison, Georgia.

http://www.ajc.com/news/georgia-politics-elections/ad-war-in-georgia-594812.html

Vs.