Former state Sen. Eric Johnson is about to begin a new - and critical - phase of his campaign for governor.
The Savannah Republican has spent most of a year raising money and cultivating opinion leaders, especially in the vote-rich Atlanta area.
He's shrugged off his lackluster showing in early polls.
None of them matter, he says; they're only indicators of name identification.
They'll begin to matter, he adds, when people start to pay attention.
With the July 20 primary election just four months away, that time is fast approaching, he acknowledged last week.
So far, his below-the-radar focus on shaking the political money trees and quietly making friends seems to be paying off.
He's avoided the crossfire of mudslinging and raised more money than any GOP candidate but state insurance commissioner John Oxendine. Moreover, Steve Green, Johnson's state chairman, says the Ox's financial advantage is fading.
Among his party's real contenders, only Oxendine is affected by a law that bars state elected officials from raising money during the ongoing General Assembly.
So when campaign finance reports are filed early next month, Green says, Johnson will nearly match Oxendine in cash on hand. That suggests he'll have something approaching $2 million - and maybe more.
But Johnson still has a steep hill to climb.
He's far behind Oxendine - as well as former Secretary of State Karen Handel - in the polls, and also trails U.S. Rep. Nathan Deal.
On the other hand, Oxendine and Deal have been nagged by conflict-of-interest allegations.
Moreover, Deal's fundraising lagged late last year; another dip - and additional ethics-related problems - could scuttle his hopes.
Oxendine remains formidable, but not quite as formidable as his campaign's hype about polls has sometimes claimed.
And he needs to skate the rest of his primary election campaign program without any more ethics deductions.
Meanwhile, Handel seems to have new momentum stemming from the appeal of her reformist, I'm-not-one-of-the-good-ol'-boys rhetoric.
Her biggest weakness so far: fundraising.
Will her next report signal she has the resources to amplify her message down the stretch? If it does, that could be a problem for Johnson. But there is nothing he can do about it.
What he can do is demonstrate skill and discipline in driving home his own message, which - in a word - is jobs.
In hard times, it is both an easy sell, and - at least as pitched by Johnson - a somewhat hard one.
Easy, because Georgia unemployment is at its worst since the Depression.
Hard, because, except for some state transportation projects, Johnson's approach is mostly indirect.
He wants to use tax and regulatory policy to shape an environment that creates incentives for investment, expansion - and hiring.
That might be too subtle for many folks. Especially in hard times, they want to see government doing something about jobs.
Never mind the ongoing federavl effort to do something can boast at-best mixed results. Or that much of its $800 billion cost will be borne by future taxpayers.
Johnson needs to explain simply and convincingly in 30- or 60-second video bytes why his strategy will work.
Of course, he probably doesn't need to do it well enough to persuade most of the people who'll turn out for the primary.
With seven candidates, no one likely will garner a majority, so there probably will be a runoff among the top two finishers.
For now, Johnson merely must convince enough voters to be one of those two.
But even that will take energy, money, skill - and a bit of luck.
Perdue has proven that we need a Democratic governor.
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