With his candidate of choice, Eric Johnson, out of the race, U.S. Rep. Jack Kingston is throwing his support behind Nathan Deal in the gubernatorial runoff.

"I encourage conservative Republicans in Southeast Georgia to join me in rallying behind Nathan Deal to be Georgia's next governor. For those who supported Eric Johnson, Nathan is the natural fit for the Aug. 10 runoff.

"As a member of Congress, Nathan earned a perfect score from the American Conservative Union which speaks volumes for his conservative record.

"On immigration, he introduced legislation and led the fight to end birthright citizenship. His citizenship verification law slashed Medicaid fraud, cutting Georgia's Medicaid rolls by 160,000 and saving our state millions.

Nathan Deal and Karen Handel are virtually tied, according to a poll of 400 likely Republican primary voters taken Thursday night by McLaughlin & Associates and released today by the Deal campaign.

Be aware that Team Real wouldn’t have released this poll if it wasn’t favorable to them. That said, 39 percent of respondents support Deal, 38 percent support Handel and 23 percent are undecided. The poll has a 4.9 percent margin of error.

The poll also shows:

• Deal and Handel both have favorable ratings above 50 percent, but both Handel’s favorable and unfavorable ratings are higher than Deal’s.

• 38 percent think Deal has a better chance of beating Roy Barnes, compared to 33 percent who think Handel does.

• 56 percent called Deal conservative and 19 percent called him moderate or liberal. Forty-one percent said Handel is moderate or liberal, and 35 percent said she is conservative.

If you’ve been following the Republican race for governor lately, you're probably under the impression that they think gay people – not the economy, not unemployment, not education cuts – are the single biggest challenge facing the future of our great state.

Team Deal aired an ad attacking Karen Handel’s positions on gay issues – charges she vehemently disputes.

Team Ox set up a website devoted largely to alleging that Handel is sympathetic to gays – something she adamantly denies.

Now, Handel, who left her broken home at age 17, is saying gay parents are not as good as straight ones, and they should not be able to adopt children, according to 11Alive.

A good rule of thumb to remember in politics is whoever’s under attack is probably winning.

Candidates for insurance commissioner have been coming after state Sen. Ralph Hudgens, R-Hull, for a long time. Just today, state Sen. Seth Harp, R-Midland, issued a news release accusing Hudgens of failing to return $106,000 that he illegally transferred from his state Senate campaign account to fund his run for insurance commissioner.

Former Gov. Roy Barnes is just shy of winning the Democratic nomination for governor without a runoff, according to a new Public Policy Polling survey released today.

The poll showed Barnes with 49 percent of the vote, Attorney General Thurbert Baker with 19 percent and 21 percent undecided. Support for the other five candidates was negligible – they split the remaining 11 percent.

The survey of 600 Democratic likely voters taken July 2 and 3 did not include a margin of error.

A couple of interesting factoids: African-Americans supported Barnes over Baker, who is black, by a 51-28 margin. White voters were twice as likely to be undecided as African-Americans. The older the voter, the more likely he was to support Barnes. Women and men hardly differed at all in who they supported.

An Insider Advantage/WSB-TV poll released today shows John Oxendine and Karen Handel neck-and-neck in the Republican gubernatorial race, but a third of voters are still undecided less than three weeks before the Election Day.

Be wary, because the quality of Insider Advantage’s polls have come into question. But six weeks ago, the firm showed Oxendine with 23 percent of the vote and Handel and Nathan Deal essentially tied for second. CEO Matt Towery says Handel and Eric Johnson are on the rise, while Deal and Oxendine are slipping.

President Barack Obama got served today by Republican gubernatorial candidate Karen Handel and Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer.

Brewer, who recently signed the nation’s toughest immigration law, endorsed Handel for governor of Georgia. As Republicans are seeking to one-up each other on who can make life most miserable for illegal immigrants, Handel is citing her battle with the Obama Administration over whether she can check voters’ citizenship – a process the Justice Department says results in minority citizens being wrongfully kicked off the voter rolls. Attorney General Eric Holder is also considering challenging the Arizona law, which requires police to check criminal suspects' citizenship.

From the Team Handel news release:

In her endorsement, Governor Brewer said:

Yet another Roy Barnes campaign ad is hitting the airwaves.

In this ad, Barnes addresses pine trees.

“I didn’t listen enough before chopping you down,” he tells the lumber he used to build his Marietta mansion. “And for that, I apologize.”

OK, I made that up. The ad actually talks about pine trees as an alternative energy source.

My name is David Poythress, and I’m asking for your vote for governor.

Why should you support me? For one, take a gander at my new website. It has lots of camo and a video of a guy with a thick Southern accent. Unlike other those other rich lawyer bank-investin’ candidates, I understand you and your love for tall rubber boots.

So, yeah, Poythress’ new website, bagbarnes.com, is pretty hilarious. It’s a one-stop shop for all things anti-Roy Barnes. The aforementioned “hypocrisy hunter’s” money line is, “Democrats, we got to bag Barnes before the Republicans get a chance to in the fall.”

And that’s the Poythress campaign in a nutshell: Vote for me because Roy can’t win.

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Former Gov. Roy Barnes has a new video up on his website apologizing to teachers for messing them around.

Teachers are a key constituency that believes Barnes double-crossed them on tenure, and now he’s trying to win them back. The 1:30 video quotes Barnes apologizing to teachers, and teachers alternating between accepting his apology and saying he shouldn’t have to apologize at all.

“I agree that I should have slowed down, and I should have reached consensus better and listened better,” Barnes says. “And for that, I think that’s the greatest failure of my administration.”

To drive the point home, Barnes is hosting a conference call for teachers on June 23. Will it be pillow talk or a screaming match?