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Last Updated June 22, 2005
In the last years of the 20th century, the hills and mountains of north Georgia suddenly became one of the boom areas of the South. This was a sharp turn in their history: Since the Cherokee were driven out early in the 19th century this was poor country, where small farmers scratched a living off rocky land. It was devastated by the Civil War, by General Sherman's troops and because so many young men who left to fight for the Confederacy (and a few who left from mountain counties to fight for the Union) never returned. After the war, not much changed for a while. Most communities lived in isolation; roads with hairpin curves led to remote hills where until very recently moonshine stills were more common than summer cabins (the novel Deliverance was a thinly-disguised portrait of life along the Coosawatee River in Gilmer and Murray Counties, though the movie was filmed on the Chattooga River in Rabun County). In time, textile mills began springing up along the railroads, poultry production became a big business around Gainesville, and in Dalton the craft tradition of tufted bedspread handiwork was transformed into the world's largest carpet industry, producing 60% of the world's tufted carpet. But these were low-wage industries and all white; there had never been many slaves here and there are few blacks here today. Since the 1980s, there has been a rush of change. Interstate highways have brought north Georgia in easy range of the world-city of Atlanta; the carpet industry has become more high-tech; small manufacturing is booming, with higher-skill work replacing low-tech mills; vacation and retirement communities have been built in mountains and around lakes. Agribusiness remains important, with huge poultry processors in Hall County around Gainesville. The carpet industry still plays a key economic role, too: The area economy is vulnerable to fluctuations in new construction activity. Once rural counties are now part of the booming ring around Atlanta, and Lake Sidney Lanier, named for the 19th century poet who wrote Song of the Chattahoochee, is the most visited lake served by the Army Corps of Engineers. So tight are the labor markets that tens of thousands of Latinos from Texas, Mexico and other Latin countries have come to Dalton, Gainesville and the area around to snap up the jobs the boom is creating; this area now has nearly three times as many Hispanics as blacks. The 10th Congressional District covers most of northwest Georgia, snaking far enough south to take fast-growing parts of counties on the east edge of metro Atlanta--Gwinnett, Walton, Rockdale. Its northern tier of counties borders North Carolina, Tennessee and Alabama, much of it in the Chattanooga--not the Atlanta--media market. Here are some of the few mountainous parts of Georgia, where within living memory the major product was moonshine whiskey and which in the days of the Democratic Solid South had a robust two-party politics. Today the Democratic history of most of this region is forgotten and this is a solidly Republican area in national and state elections; when north Georgia native and lifelong Democrat Zell Miller backed George W. Bush in 2004, he was only doing as his neighbors do. The congressman from the 10th District is Nathan Deal, first elected in 1992 as a Democrat, who switched parties and became a Republican in April 1995. Deal grew up in Gainesville, went to Mercer University, then served in the Army from 1966-68; he returned home to practice "street level law," with offices always on the ground floor, and public offices a young lawyer takes as civic duty: Assistant district attorney, juvenile court judge, county attorney. In 1980, at 38, he was elected to the state Senate as a Democrat. Jimmy Carter was still president, the legislature was overwhelmingly Democratic; it would have been quixotic to run as a Republican. A capable legislator, he twice was elected Senate president pro tem. In 1992, when Democrat Ed Jenkins retired from Congress, Deal ran and defeated a Republican abortion opponent with 59% of the vote. In the House, Deal opposed the new Clinton administration's economic policies, voting against the 1993 budget, for the line-item veto and balanced budget amendment. Many saw Deal as a potential party-switcher, but while campaigning in 1994 he said, "If I choose to switch during the term, I think the honest thing to do is resign and have a special election." He beat an underfunded Republican, but with a slightly lower percentage than two years before. In early 1995, he worked with other Democrats to offer an alternative to the Republicans' welfare reform package. On April 3, Deal said how pleased he was by Democrats' support for that plan. Two days later, he was unhappy with Democrats' opposition to tax cuts and with senior Democrats' criticisms of Clean Water Act revisions he had won on a bipartisan committee vote. On April 10, back home in Gainesville, Deal announced he was a Republican--but he did not resign and run in a special election. He said the national Democratic Party was unwilling to admit it was "out of touch with mainstream America," and "I think that it is important that at some point you get away from the schizophrenia I have had to deal with." Democrats were stunned, and Newt Gingrich was clearly delighted; Deal was rewarded with a seat on the Commerce Committee. Deal's voting record is mostly conservative. Although he has not been a reflexive Republican, he has not made dramatic breaks from the party line either. He filed a bill to cut up to 10% of congressional salaries if the budget is not balanced. Working with the Federation for American Immigration Reform, he sponsored higher penalties for illegal aliens plus citizenship restrictions on their U.S.-born children, and he opposed the Bush administration's study of legalization of immigrants from Mexico. But he made some accommodation to a district with a rapidly growing Hispanic population by backing increased spending for bilingual education; a majority of school children in Dalton are Hispanic. He also focused on the problems faced by Lake Lanier because of heavy use and Georgia's water shortage, and he won House passage of a $75 million water project for north Georgia, which would include 47 miles of water lines. On the Telecommunications and the Internet Subcommittee, he was the leading proponent of "a la carte" proposals to give cable television subscribers greater choice. He called his plan "a step toward protecting the American family from indecency;" opponents said that the proposal could lead to higher prices and fewer programming choices. In 2005, he accrued enough seniority to become chairman of the Subcommittee on Health at Energy and Commerce. Deal has not faced serious opposition from either party since 1995, and he has been unopposed the past two cycles.
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