My Choice for Georgia Governor.

Primary elections - particularly in off years - are pretty much for hard core political junkies like yours truly; the Republicans who will vote in the primary are really Republicans. Likewise, the Democrats who will cast their votes in the upcoming primary are equally hard-core. No middle of the roaders, these folks.

One might say that I'm the hard-core of the hard-core. We have early voting in Georgia; rather than wait until July 20, I took advantage of the early voting by voting on Tuesday.

When I first took a serious look at the candidates in January, I considered voting for Karen Handel for Govenor but, at that time it appeared that John Oxendine would be a shoe-in. After Handel received an endorsement from Arizona Govenor Jan Brewer a few weeks ago, I decided that Handel would most definitely be getting my vote in the primary. Brewer is my favorite Republican these days. The day after I voted in the "early voting" I learned that Handel was being endorsed by Sarah Palin.

Getting the endorsement of these two is no small achievement.

There was never a question that there would be a run off after next week's Republican primary. It looks now, though, that Handel will be in the run off, but it's difficult at this point to predict whether it will be Oxendine or Deal running against her. Earlier in the year, it looked like Oxendine would be the one to beat. A run off between Handel and Deal was not seen in anyone's crystal ball this past January.

At any rate, come November, I'll vote for which ever Republican wins the run off. There's no way I could vote for the probable Democrat candidate - former Governor Roy Barnes.

When you throw everything into the mix - his being thrown out of office by Georgia voters eight years ago, the unpopularity of our current President and Democrats in general - it's unlikely that Barnes will be elected in November. Barnes may lead among Georgia's Democrats but getting a majority of all Georgia voters is all together different.