ATLANTA - Democratic Gov. Roy Barnes unleashed an attack ad Friday against one of three Republicans fighting to challenge him in November, accusing Sonny Perdue of working to help convicted felons, including a child molester and cop-killer.
Perdue, who denied the same charges when they were raised last April by GOP rival Bill Byrne, accused Barnes of waging a last-minute television campaign designed to sway the outcome of next week's GOP primary election.
"I think he's trying to defeat me because he does not want to face me in November," Perdue said at a hastily called news conference at the Capitol. "Sonny Perdue is Roy Barnes' worst nightmare and he knows it."
The ad began appearing on a day the three Republican candidates - Perdue, Byrne and state School Superintendent Linda Schrenko - prepared for one of the final televised debates of the primary campaign. It figured briefly in the debate but did not dominate it.
The ad also marked the first time that the well-financed governor has run a negative ad after months of airing biographic and issue commercials.
The Barnes ad contends Perdue as a lawmaker "tried to help more than 20 hardened criminals, including a child molester ... Worst of all, Sonny Perdue even tried to help cold-blooded cop-killer David Melton Rogers."
It ends with an announcer saying, "Tell Sonny Perdue that when criminals win, the people lose" - a twist on Perdue's own slogan that when he wins, the people win.
The man referred to in the ad, David Melton Rogers, was charged in the murder of Harvey James Adams, a Marietta police officer working in a special undercover narcotics operation.
Department of Corrections records show that in May 1997 Perdue asked the agency to transfer Rogers closer to Cochran. The agency replied that he was being transferred to Valdosta, the only facility that could provide close security and meet his mental health needs.
When challenged by Byrne in April to say why he intervened for inmates, Perdue said he was often contacted by relatives of prisoners and merely passed along their requests to the state agencies without making a recommendation.
Many legislators say they routinely handle such requests in similar fashion.
Perdue, meanwhile, fired back with a charge of his own, asserting that as a lawyer, Barnes was a serial defender "of hardened criminals, murders and rapists."
In 1976, he said, Barnes defended a man charged with kidnapping and rape and in 1982 he defended a man convicted of killing a 22-month-old child.
Similar charges were raised unsuccessfully against Barnes in the 1998 campaign when a Democratic rival attacked him for defending a child molester and the Republican nominee repeatedly labeled him soft on crime.
"Lawyers, as officers of the court, have a sworn duty to provide the best defense possible for clients," said Phillips, the Barnes campaign manager. "Sonny Perdue, as an elected official, has no business making phone calls to get felons better treatment."
"The general election has already begun and we haven't gotten through the primary," said University of Georgia political science professor Charles Bullock. He said the attack ad suggests Barnes assumes Perdue is the person to beat.
Perdue, himself, claimed that in his closing statement at Friday's debate and admonished Republicans: "Don't let Roy Barnes dictate to you who your nominee will be."
Earlier in the hour-long, televised encounter, Byrne held up a letter which he claimed showed Perdue actively sought help for a prisoner rather than serving merely as a conduit as Perdue insisted.
"When are you going to level with us," Byrne asked him. Perdue replied, "Your facts are wrong. You need to fire your researcher."