Your morning jolt: On TV, Karen Handel hits Nathan Deal as ‘a corrupt relic of Washington’

Republican candidate for governor Karen Handel makes use of Sarah Palin’s endorsement in her first TV ad in the Republican runoff for government – which also condemns rival Nathan Deal as “a corrupt relic of Washington D.C.”

“One carries a purse, the other carries baggage,” the 30-second ad begins.

The TV spot follows on the heels of an AJC report of federal grand jury interest in a meeting called by Deal in the hope of preserving his business with the state.

Handel spokesman Dan McLagan says the ad is targeted at metro Atlanta, and describes the airtime buy as “big.”

The script:

Male voiceover: One carries a purse. The other carries baggage.

One whom Sarah Palin says has cut government, and is the true conservative.

Or the other, who added trillions to our national debt.

One a conservative reformer. One a corrupt relic of Washington D.C.

Karen Handel is Georgia’s strong conservative. Impeccable integrity. Our thrilling, vibrant future. Karen Handel. Bring it on.

The ad by Fred Davis incorporates the black, white and red tones of Handel’s single “Lipstick” ad in the GOP primary.

It’s also the first major use that Handel’s been able to make of the Palin endorsement – which arrived late in the primary, after the former secretary of state’s slim finances had already been committed.

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From the other side of the aisle, Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor Carol Porter is attempting to draft behind Handel and her attacks on Deal.

The following appeared on Porter’s Facebook page on Wednesday:

My short-version:) assessment of the corruption story: The incumbent Lieutenant Governor Casey Cagle (against whom I am running) and Nathan Deal brought Bart… Graham, the Revenue Commissioner into the office of the Lt. Gov. (that is your… office by the way) to allegedly strong-arm him into stopping Graham’s efforts to privatize the DOR inspections which would have quite possibly slowed Nathan’s 1.5 million of no bid state money for his company.

Graham thought his ideas would save the taxpayers’ money. Cagle and Deal allegedly didn’t like Graham’s suggestion. Somehow, in the Senate, over which Cagle presides and is the President, the money in question got put back in the budget again.

Deal says he sent an email asking Cagle not to do it. He did. The little fact he keeps leaving out? It was an hour after the vote had been taken, Really. They thought we wouldn’t check? By the way, Nathan Deal has used some of his funds to donate to Cagle.

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Officially, National Girlfriends Day isn’t until Sunday. That said, it is always a good time to review Political Rule No. 525b: “Anything that two consenting adults do in private, without witnesses, can be explained away as something innocent and misunderstood. Unless the lights are out.”

From my AJC colleague Cameron McWhirter:

State Sen. Preston Smith, a Republican candidate for attorney general, had an extramarital affair with a woman whom he hired to work in his Senate office in 2003 and 2004, according to transcripts of Smith’s testimony in his 2009 divorce….

Atlanta attorney Charles Medlin, who represented Michelle Smith in the divorce,… said Smith’s wife discovered the relationship when she arrived as his state senate campaign headquarters one night. She found Smith’s car in the lot, but all the lights were out in the office. She went inside, turned on the lights and discovered Smith and the woman.

“I don’t know what possible campaign work a politician could be doing in the dark,” Medlin said.

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But pillowtalk isn’t the only thing happening around Smith, a state senator from Rome. For years, Smith was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and opposed a House GOP effort to allow the death penalty to be imposed without the unanimous consent of a jury.

Austin Rhodes, a conservative talk show host in Augusta on WGAC (580AM) has published a letter from Barry Fleming, legal counsel to the House, to Sam Olens, Smith’s Republican runoff rival:

Sam,

It was House bill 185 in the 2007-2008 session. It passed the House in 2007. When the bill passed the House it went to the Senate requiring a 10-2 vote of the jury in favor of the death penalty to allow the judge to then decide to impose the death penalty. (The bill was introduced requiring a 9-3 in order to give the judge the option of applying the death penalty but was amended to 10-2 in the legislative process.) The bill always required a separate 12-0 vote on guilt first.

When the bill passed over to the Senate side Preston Smith killed the bill in his committee. He was chairman of the judiciary committee. (He intentionally waited until the Republicans senators left the committee room to go to other meetings in the last few hectic days of the session, and then called for a vote on the bill while democrats held a majority on the committee. The dems voted against it.

Most of this was caught on tape by GPTV and witnessed by a large number of DA’s across the state who had come to beg him to pass the bill.)

A version of House bill 185 passed again in the House in 2008 attached to Senate bill 145. This time Smith went to the well of the Senate when the bill came back across to his chamber and lead the effort to strip the death penalty language out of the bill and killed it again.

This morning, Smith said at the Columbia County GOP breakfast that the reason he killed the bill was because it would have “harmed the death penalty.” This is hogwash because other states have similar laws that have been upheld as constitutional (for example Florida only requires a majority vote of 7-5).

Also, if Smith thought the bill needed to be adjusted in any way he could have simply and easily made any changes he thought necessary in his committee, since he was chairman of the Senate Judiciary committee and that is where the bill was assigned.

DA Danny Porter in Gwinnett County had the poster case for why the bill was needed. Two thugs hijacked a car with a young mother and baby daughter in the car. The baby was in a car seat. They shot the mother in the head but did not kill her. Then in front of the mother they shot the baby girl to death. Then they put the mother with the little girl in the trunk of the car and set them on fire.

Twelve jurors who were selected all said that if the facts warranted, they would apply the death penalty. After the trial where the jury deadlocked on the death penalty with only about two voting against it, one of those two admitted after the case was over that they never would have voted for the death penalty under any circumstances.

In other words, they should have told the truth and been excused before they got on the jury. There were between 15-20 other example cases like this the DA Association put together for me to use to help get the bill passed…

Of course, we all know of the Brian Nichols case. Four dead (two officers, a judge and court reporter) and another deputy beat until she is now mentally impaired.

Barry Fleming

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The Macon Telegraph, by the way, this morning says the final words over the third GOP candidate in the race for attorney general:

Macon native Max Wood won’t get a chance to request a recount in his failed bid for the Republican nomination for state attorney general.

Wood, a former U.S. attorney, narrowly trailed second-place finisher Preston Smith by a margin of 1.1 percent (6,589 votes) after state election officials certified the vote Wednesday.

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