Matt Towery Sarah Palin Express steams into Georgia

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In a Townhall.com op-ed, Matt Towery discusses the Republican primary race for governor in the Peach State:

The Sarah Palin Express may be gaining even more steam, at least within the Republican Party. Another of her "Mama Grizzlies," Georgia's former secretary of state Karen Handel, on July 20 emerged from obscurity in the polls to take the most votes in the GOP general primary election for governor.

The feisty Handle now heads to an Aug. 10 runoff. She will face the more laid-back Nathan Deal, a former congressman who served many years in Washington. Deal switched from the Democratic Party to the Republican after the 1994 election, when Georgia's Newt Gingrich engineered his "Republican Revolution" that took control of the House.

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None other than Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska and the reigning queen of the Republican Party, entered on her personal Facebook page an endorsement of Handel a week or so before Election Day in Georgia.

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Deal, Handel's GOP runoff opponent, hasn't enjoyed such luck. This week the Atlanta Journal-Constitution disclosed a subpoena from a federal grand jury. It was issued to Georgia's revenue commissioner and asked for all documents and information related to a meeting -- a quite contentious meeting -- Deal once had with the commissioner. The topic of discussion was a business relationship Deal and a partner had with the state for many years.

Deal has not been named as a target of the investigation. Nor has he been informed that he is in any way involved with the grand jury's inquiry.

Politically, that may not matter. One can imagine what campaign TV ads the Handel team will produce in the last weeks leading up to the runoff that will utter the chilling words "grand jury investigation."

Read Towery's full TH column here.

- JP