Nathan Deal leaves office for the last time in a couple of weeks, ending a nearly four-decade career in the public eye as a Georgia state senator, a United States congressman and, finally, the 82nd governor of Georgia.
But if he’s bittersweet about the end nearing, he doesn’t show it. He speaks matter-of-factly about what he thinks he accomplished as governor, and he seems ready to hand the pressure of running the nation’s 8th largest state to someone else.
“There’s a lot of pressure that goes with a job like this,” Deal said. “So we’re going to rest for a while. We’re tired, and I think that’s an appropriate answer. … But as I look back over 38 years (in elected office), I think overall, I can’t be displeased with what has occurred. I’m particularly pleased with what we’ve been able to accomplish while I’ve been governor.”
Yet exactly what his legacy will be, Deal said, is something for others to decide.
“A legacy is something that you’ve done that will last, that worked and produced great results” he said. “I’m hopeful that I’ve had a lot of programs that I have introduced or expanded that fit that definition. But I’m not one that’s about having a legacy.”
In a wide-ranging interview Wednesday in his ceremonial office at the state Capitol, Deal discussed his early political career, including a party switch; his accomplishments as Georgia’s governor; and why he’s confident the state’s economic growth will continue with the next administration.
Since he took office in 2011, Georgia has been ranked the No. 1 state in the nation for business for six years in a row – a first in state history. More than 750,000 private sector jobs have been created, outpacing the national average.
Early in his first term, Georgia was still recovering from the Great Recession. Revenues coming into the state took a hit. But Deal chose not to follow the lead of many other states that decided to raise taxes.
“I didn’t work out for those states,” Deal said, “because many of those businesses migrated to states like Georgia that didn’t penalize the people nor the businesses because of the downturn. We simply cut back on our expenditures. It was painful, just like it was for private citizens and their businesses and their families, but that was the necessity of it.”
Through a combination of tax reform measures, workforce development programs and an investment in technical education, Deal and the legislature were able to turn the state’s economy around, growing both small businesses and attracting top global companies from around the world. Today, Deal touts the state’s low unemployment rate of about 3 percent, many companies relocating or expanding here and a state “rainy day” fund of about $2.5 billion as examples of how his economic development team has been able to boost Georgia’s economy.
“We grew ourselves out of (the recession) rather than taxing ourselves out of it,” he said. “We had never been named the No. 1 state for business until it happened in 2013, and once we got that, we haven’t let go of it.”
Deal believes one reason the state has been successful at attracting jobs and industry is the state’s investment in education – particularly technical education – and workforce development. No where is that investment more evident than in the governor’s home of Hall County, where a brand-new, $131 million campus for Lanier Technical College has sprung up on 95 acres off Ga. 365 near Howard Road. The new campus welcomes its first students in January.
“It’s going to be a showplace for technical education in the state of Georgia,” Deal said of the new campus. “Job training and teaching job skills is so important, and the expansion of Lanier Tech will allow for the training for jobs of today and jobs of tomorrow. That’s the only way we can sustain this kind of economic development.”
For all the economic development successes in many parts of the state, Deal acknowledged that some parts of Georgia aren’t enjoying the same kind of success, particularly in job growth and reducing unemployment.
“In some ways, we’ve done all we can do within the realm of government,” he said. “We still have lots of do in terms of education, but that’s something that needs to be concentrated on at the local level.”
Still, Deal touted an $11 million project to expand the runways at 26 smaller, regional airports around the state as a pivotal move to attract businesses. Longer runways will allow corporate jets to land in more rural areas and could boost the prospects for better jobs.
“If you can’t have the corporate CEOs come down and actually see what you offer, you’re at a disadvantage to getting the business,” Deal said.
One of the issues that affects Deal most personally is criminal justice reform. When he took office, the state was in the midst of a crisis, with spiraling incarceration costs and recidivism rates. He pushed for a series of bipartisan reforms that have saved the state $264 million and reduced the need for more than 5,000 additional prison beds.
The reforms also provided judges with greater discretion in sentencing juvenile offenders and they expanded community-based options across the state. Perhaps the most significant was the expansion of accountability courts, an effort used with great success by the governor’s son, Jason Deal, a Hall County Superior Court judge.
Accountability courts deal with drug offenders, DUI suspects, juveniles, veterans, families, people suffering from mental illness and others. The courts, supervised by a judge, provide sentencing alternatives of treatment and rigorous guidelines that help people work toward long-term recovery.
“I think everybody believes in redemption,” he said. “Everybody, hopefully, believes in giving people a second chance.”
Deal strongly believes that accountability courts work, and he said that success is evident across the state. He said partly as a result of the courts, that state’s prison population, once expected to rise by more than 5,000 inmates during his term, has declined below 2011 levels, saving the state more than $38 million a year.
“I tell my religious friends, if you’re a preacher and you run out of sermon ideas, go to a drug court graduation,” he said. “You’ll have plenty.”
Deal became emotional talking about the issue. He said people come up to him and his wife, Sandra, all the time to tell them that a drug court saved their lives.
“The stories are overwhelming,” Deal said, choking back tears. “These are the kinds of things that government should be doing. Sometimes we don’t get to see the human side of what legislation does or doesn’t do. This is one way you can see the human side. Reunited families, children who are back with their parents, parents who have reclaimed their children because they’ve overcome their drug addiction.”
When Deal first ran for the state Senate in 1980, he was a Democrat. In fact, he spent his entire state legislative career and the first three years of his congressional tenue as a Democrat. But in 1994, when Republicans swept to power in the U.S. House of Representatives, Deal began to have a change of heart.
Democrats wanted to have a response to every issue in Speaker Newt Gingrich’s Contract for America, and the party leadership pushed Deal to take the lead on welfare reform for the party. He agreed, but later found out that his bill was gutted and substituted with policies and positions with which he disagreed.
“So I went home over the Easter recess (in 1995) and I talked to Sandra,” he said. “I told her I didn’t feel comfortable anymore. And she said, ‘Well, you know, even if you get beat, you made a living before you went to Congress. You can probably make a living after you leave.”
Democrats targeted the new Republican in the 1996 election, choosing to run Ken Poston, a popular state legislator from Ringgold. But Deal won re-election with more than 66 percent of the vote and he never faced serious opposition again in a congressional race.
“In congressional races, people don’t think constituent services mean anything, but it means a lot,” he said. “When people see that you really want to help them if you can, it makes all the difference in the world.
Throughout Deal’s political career, Sandra Deal has been right by his side. During his tenure as governor, his wife began an effort to increase literacy and reading skills, particularly among children across the state. In eight years, she’s read to students in 1,000 classrooms, representing all 159 counties and all 181 school systems.
“She’s never been really interested in the government side of things,” Deal said of his wife. “She takes issues because they’re important to people, and that’s what’s made her so powerful and that’s why people love her.”
Sandra Deal has been tireless about reading to children, travelling from one end of the state to another, often teasing her husband that she travelled the state by car while he gets to travel by helicopter. But the governor is proud of his wife’s accomplishments, especially getting into pre-K classrooms to interest children in book as soon as they are learning to read.
“If you are going to light a spark in children’s mind about the importance of reading, that’s where you are going to do it,” he said.
Sandra Deal had to put her travels on hold earlier this year when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. But she faced the disease with her trademark grace and humor. In February, not long after her treatments began, she tweeted photos getting her head shaved. Still, her illness took a toll on her husband, trying to run a state and care for the love of his life.
“The most difficult time for me was when I was getting ready for my last State of the State address,” he said, fighting back tears. “Sandra had just been diagnosed with breast cancer. She had not had the surgery at that point, so it was a very emotional time for me. … But she has a strength that people can’t understand. Even I can’t understand it. She went through the surgery. She went through the chemotherapy. She went through the radiation. And she never took a pain pill. At all.”
Deal leaves office in early January, handing the reins of the state over the Secretary of State Brian Kemp. Kemp wasn’t Deal’s choice in the state’s Republican primary in May, choosing to side with Casey Cagle, the lieutenant governor and a fellow Hall Countian. But Deal is optimistic that Kemp can continue that’s state economic growth.
“I think we’ve laid a lot of foundations that they can work from and expand upon,” he said. “What we have done is not the end-all, be-all. It was the first foray into areas that needed to be dealt with. Hopefully we dealt with the most difficult issues so that going forward it won’t be that difficult.”
