Do voters really care about ethics?

Nathan Deal is being pressured by his Democratic opponent in the governor’s race and by some of the state’s media to release his income tax records.

Deal so far has not made the information public, and in fact his campaign has acknowledged that he’s still in the process of completing his 2009 income tax return under an extension granted by the IRS.

Campaign spokesman Brian Robinson has said the tax records will eventually be released but hasn’t set a date for it. “You’ll know when we make the decision,” he told Larry Peterson of the Savannah Morning News.

Deal’s tax records became a pertinent issue earlier this year when the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) released a report alleging that Deal, while a member of the U.S. House, may have exceeded congressional limits on outside income.  The OCE investigation was prompted by media reports last year of a lucrative arrangement involving a Gainesville auto salvage company partly owned by Deal that did a lot of vehicle inspection work for the state revenue department.

The tax returns and the OCE report have all merged into a general criticism of Deal’s “ethics,” which presumably is the kind of issue a candidate wants to avoid when he’s running for statewide office.  You would assume, then, that Deal should disclose his tax records quickly and put the ethics issue behind him.

By the same token, not releasing the tax records would supposedly be a fatal blow to Deal’s campaign for governor and give Democratic nominee Roy Barnes an advantage in the race.  But would it really?  If Deal should make the decision between now and Nov. 2 that he simply is not going to release any of his tax records, would he lose any votes because of that refusal?

Georgia’s recent political history suggests, in fact, that ethical misconduct isn’t really that important an issue to voters.  After all, look what happened in the Republican primary.  Karen Handel built her whole campaign around the issue of cleaning up the ethical mess made by the “good ol’ boys” who run state government.  She ran TV spots narrated by Marilyn Quayle that slammed Deal, Eric Johnson and John Oxendine for their “iffy ethics.”

In her runoff campaign against Deal, Handel stepped up the emphasis on ethics, particularly after the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that a federal grand jury was looking into Deal’s business transactions with the state.  Here is what Handel’s campaign spokesman Dan McLagan said about Deal:

“What would truly destroy the party would be to nominate someone like Deal who is under a federal grand jury investigation and could be indicted or, heaven forbid, arrested at any moment.  Republicans would lose everything we have worked so hard to build.”

So who did Republican voters choose?   Deal.  Even with the disclosure that a federal grand jury was looking at him, Deal overcame an 11-point deficit from the GOP primary and upset Handel in the Aug. 10 runoff.  It’s hard to see how the ethics issue hurt him at all with voters.  Indeed, Deal has run ahead of Barnes in the early polls taken after Deal’s runoff victory.

Let’s go back four years to the 2006 race for governor, when incumbent Sonny Perdue was running against Lt. Gov. Mark Taylor.

In the middle of that campaign, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution published several explosive articles detailing Perdue’s real estate dealings in Florida with a developer he had appointed to the state Board of Economic Development.  Those articles were followed by the biggest bombshell of all, the disclosure that Perdue had signed legislation that gave himself a $100,000 tax break on one of his property transactions.

It would be hard to find a more glaring example of an elected official enriching himself personally by actions he took in his public position.  Jay Bookman of the Journal-Constitution described Perdue’s signing of the bill as “a serious abuse of public power for private gain.”   It was a textbook case of slippery ethics.

In almost any other state, an ethical transgression of that sort would kill a candidate’s chances for election.  Georgia voters were obviously not the slightest bit interested:  they gave Perdue 58 percent of the vote in the general election and a second term as governor.  Perdue, to this day, has never bothered to explain or justify his actions in signing the legislation that provided the lucrative tax benefit.

I would guess that Roy Barnes will continue to run TV ads criticizing Deal for not disclosing his personal tax information and asking what Deal is “hiding” from the voters.  But if Deal decides he’s not going to release those tax records, will it really make any difference?   After looking at recent election results, it would be difficult not to conclude that voters just don’t consider ethics to be all that important.