By Aaron Gould Sheinin
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
PDF: Candidates on the issues PDF: GOP primary poll
ATLANTA – Heading into Tuesday’s primary elections for governor, Rob Hainer is looking for the answer to just one question: Who is going to bring jobs to Georgia?
Candidates who focus on immigration, gay rights or anything else will lose his vote.
“That’s not important to me,” said Hainer, 39, who lives in Hiram and works for his brother’s construction company. “Everything falls in line if you get the jobs.”
Across party, gender and racial lines, Georgians head into Tuesday’s primaries worried about their economic futures and unhappy with the performance of their political leaders and institutions, according to a poll conducted by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research for the Georgia Newspaper Partnership, which includes the Chattanooga Times Free Press.
The poll was conducted from July 8 through July 13. Researchers polled 625 likely voters on general questions and roughly 400 Democrats and 400 Republicans on questions specific to the primary election.The margin for error is plus or minus 4 percentage points overall.
The poll found that nearly three of four Georgians are concerned about their household finances and job security, a sentiment that is casting a shadow over the state elections. The poll also found deep dissatisfaction with governmental leaders in Washington and the state Capitol in Atlanta.
Walt Alexander is particularly fed up with “career politicians.”
“In the early days of our country, to be a politician was a duty. It wasn’t meant to be a job,” said Alexander, 51, an air traffic controller and retired Air Force veteran from Macon.
“These people are up there to make money and do nothing but sit back and do nothing but fat-cat off the American taxpayers. Nobody seems to be standing up for the little guys anymore.”
The poll found:
* 52 of Georgia’s registered voters disapprove of President Barack Obama’s job performance, while 37 percent approve.
* The U.S. House and Senate together get only a 21 percent approval rating, with even Democrats showing their frustration with the institution their party leads.
* 47 percent approve of their congressman’s job performance. Incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson gets the same 47 percent approval rating.
* Gov. Sonny Perdue gets an overall positive job performance rating by 45 percent. Two-thirds of Republicans approve, but 44 percent of women disapprove of the governor’s performance. By comparison, Perdue got a 66 percent approval rating in a 2008 Mason-Dixon poll.
* 39 percent of voters give the Legislature a positive job-approval rating, and even among Republicans only, 45 percent say the House and Senate are doing a good job.
FOCUS ON ECONOMY
Brad Coker, managing director of Mason-Dixon Polling & Research, said the results confirm that many Georgians share Hainer’s view.
“Everything pivots around the economy, and always No. 2 is government spending and the deficit,” Coker said. “This election is all about pocketbook issues.”
Everything else, he said, is just noise this year. For example, while a large majority favor an Arizona-style immigration law for Georgia , and a majority support repealing the new federal health care law, when voters were asked their top issues, those topics fell by the side.
“Immigration is a sideshow, gay marriage is a sideshow, abortion is a sideshow,” Coker said. “You want to get to the bulk of voters, you need to talk to them about pocketbook issues.”
Amen, said Mike Pennesi, 55, of Duluth.
“While normally social issues are very important to me, I’m more concerned about the fiscal state of this country, and if we don’t get a grip on some things and start saying ‘no,’ we won’t have a country to worry about,” said Pennesi, who is in sales for a tech company.
An independent who leans Republican, Pennesi said he has yet to choose a candidate in Tuesday’s primary.
Many of the dozens of voters interviewed for this story echoed Pennesi’s concerns about the economy and his ambivalence about the candidates.
That’s not surprising, said Kerwin Swint, a professor of political science at Kennesaw State University.
On the Republican side, none of the top candidates – former U.S. Rep. Nathan Deal, former Secretary of State Karen Handel, former state Sen. Eric Johnson and Insurance Commissioner John Oxendine – has a clear edge when it comes to economic matters.
“You’ve got some pretty diverse candidates there, with different backgrounds,” Swint said. “I don’t really know if any of them can lay claim to particularly having a hand up in that area.”
Bill Callahan, a retiree who lives near Griffin, said he usually votes Democratic, but this year is more interested in a candidate’s jobs plan than party label.
“It’s time the economy made a move and we put people back to work,” said Callahan, who retired from Southern Bell in 1987. “We’ve got too many people unemployed.”
Kass Caraballo, a 47-year-old Republican real-estate agent in Kennesaw, has seen her earnings slide with the housing market. Now her warrant officer husband, a helicopter pilot in the Army, is getting ready to go to the Middle East.
“I think priorities are put in the wrong place for our tax dollars and we’re being taxed to death just to grow our government,” she said. “We’re using tax dollars to grow government and we’re cutting teachers and education and that is the future of our country – our children and education.”
Education is the reason the normally party-line voter said she might support Democrat Roy Barnes for governor. She said she believes that he cares about education and will put together a plan to bolster schools.
In Brunswick, Deborah Houston said she likes Republicans Oxendine and Handel for their positions on repealing the state income tax, but she worries it’s just an empty promise.
“It would take a financial burden off a lot of people, but they don’t say how they would make up for that money,” Houston said. “I’m a die-hard Republican, but it would make my vote a lot easier if they would explain their plan.”
Jesse Hodges, 43, lost his full-time freight supervisor job and now works for another trucking company as an intake clerk on the docks making $500 less a week.
The Democrat from Austell, a Navy veteran, laughs at the suggestion of some politicians that the unemployed are coasting on their unemployment checks.
“You get $330 a week max,” said Hodges. “I just think at the state level that the government has lost its compassion because they are not unemployed.”
“Everybody talks a good game but when do politicians ever have an impact?”
Contact Aaron Gould Sheinin at asheinin@ajc.com
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