Georgia GOP preps for presidential primary pageant

ATLANTA -- As the presidential race heads to the South for a group of primaries known as Super Tuesday, the Georgia surrogates for top Republican contenders are stepping up the campaigning.

Georgia can expect increasing attention, especially after the Feb. 20 South Carolina primary. On March 1, the big show is in the South, where seven states will vote. Texas carries the most weight among them, but Georgia comes in second.

In the South, candidates will woo electorates that are much more heavily evangelical Christian than in the nation as a whole, and much more racially diverse than in overwhelmingly white Iowa and New Hampshire.

Of the Republicans still in the race for their party's presidential nomination, four have managed a top-three finish in either the Iowa or New Hampshire primary: New York business tycoon Donald Trump, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and Ohio Governor John Kasich.

Trump is the one to beat in Georgia, according to polls averaged by Real Clear Politics, a news website. That site gives him about one-third of the vote. Early voting already is underway.

Trump made an early visit to the midstate with a speech and rally in November that attracted about 6,000 people to the Macon Coliseum on short notice. State Sen. Burt Jones, R-Jackson, is one of the few Georgia elected officials who has endorsed the frontrunner.

Jones said Trump has a "big personality" that may rub some people the wrong way, but he also said the New Yorker polls very well on issues such as the economy and immigration. Trump campaigns as a professional deal-maker who would improve the economy and shut out illegal immigrants.

While the South may fancy itself more genteel than other regions, and definitely goes to church more, Jones said none of that hurts his sometimes rather profane candidate.

"They're not looking to elect a Sunday School teacher. They're looking to elect a commander-in-chief," Jones said.

But don't underestimate the politically energized Sunday School crowd. Despite temperatures that never got above 40 degrees outside the state Capitol on Wednesday, a few thousand people crowded downtown in the middle of the day for a get-out-the-vote rally by Franklin Graham, president and CEO of the nonprofit that carries his father's name, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.

Franklin Graham endorsed no one and said he has zero hope in either party. But he did urge people to go to the voting booth and take their faith with them.

"The only hope for this nation is God," Franklin said.

Another man of God, pastor Rafael Cruz, the father of Ted Cruz, visited Georgia last week campaigning for his son.

Faiths vary but do play a big role for a lot of Georgia Republican primary voters, said state Sen. Mike Crane, R-Newnan, one of Cruz's top Georgia leaders.

He touted Cruz's values and message. The Texan campaigns in part on his role as a lawyer arguing cases for strict adherence to the U.S. Constitution, including the Second Amendment.

Crane said he expects his candidate to win on the substance of his message as opposed to what he called the "empty" rhetoric of Trump.

"At the end of the day, we're electing not an entertainer, we're electing somebody to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States," Crane said.

Ted Cruz won the Iowa Republican caucus but slipped to third in New Hampshire.

And then there's Kasich, who failed to get even 2 percent of the vote in Iowa, but then leapfrogged other candidates to a second-place finish in New Hampshire.

The governor campaigns on his record of overseeing a shift in Ohio's state budget from deep red into the black, and also being one of the architects of a balanced federal budget when he was chairman of the House Budget Committee in 1997.

"What's going to really appeal to Georgia voters is that our state has always been fiscally conservative. Out of all the candidates he's the only one with experience balancing budgets," said state Senate Majority Leader Bill Cowsert, R-Athens, one of Kasich's Georgia campaign co-chairmen.

"Quite a few of the candidates are talking very shallow talking points," Cowsert said. But voters, he contends, "want somebody that has got really deeply thought out, substantive positions."

Florida's Rubio faltered between Iowa and New Hampshire, dropping from third to fifth. Rep. Austin Scott, R-Ga., is chairman of Rubio's campaign in Georgia and came to the state Capitol in Atlanta last week, stumping for his man and announcing a Rubio endorsement from Lynn Westmoreland, a fellow Georgia Republican.

Taking turns at a Capitol stairs podium, Scott and other Rubio allies painted the Floridian as the candidate who's a solid Republican but can appeal to enough voters to win in the general election against a Democrat.

Rubio is a "fact-based decision maker," said Scott, who is from Tifton. Scott said he grew to respect Rubio by watching his work on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Scott highlighted Rubio's plan to fight ISIS. That plan involves more troops and more engagement in the Middle East to undermine the terrorist group.

At this point in the contest, Georgia state expert Daniel Franklin, a professor at Georgia State University, draws a road map with many possible paths to the nomination.

Franklin said he thinks Trump is plateauing at about 40 percent support -- not enough to run away with the nomination.

He's looking to see how the "winnowing out" may happen to the benefit of Cruz, Kasich or Rubio.

Georgia and the other March 1 primary states will hand out their GOP delegates roughly in proportion to the popular vote count. Later states operate a winner-take-all system.

"If the field isn't winnowed enough, if there aren't enough of the Republicans who drop out of the race and Trump gets 40 percent and everybody else splits up the other 60 percent, he gets all of the delegates" in those winner-take-all states, Franklin said. "That gives him a really good boost."

He thinks the Republican Party is not excited about the prospect of a Trump nomination.

"The party's been looking around for somebody to support. ... It was Rubio for a while. I have a feeling it's going to be Kasich now except for the fact that Kasich supported Obamacare in Ohio."

Republican primaries finish with five states scheduled to vote on June 7.

This story was originally published February 13, 2016 at 7:54 PM with the headline "Georgia GOP preps for presidential primary pageant ."