SAVANNAH, Ga. --- Republican Karen Handel came out swinging at John Oxendine at the Georgia GOP convention Friday as she aired a slick, stinging campaign video that compared her gubernatorial rival to a lumbering beast.
A number of convention delegates whooped and applauded during the three-minute video's opening shots of a shaggy ox straining and tugging against a taught rope threaded through a ring in the animal's nose.
"It weighs tons. Is loud. Moves not with grace, but with a lumbering gait. It is the ox," a narrator says. "Who could be stronger than an ox?"
Ms. Handel, Georgia's secretary of state, hopes die-hard Republicans at the convention in Savannah will decide she's the stronger candidate in the crowded 2010 race for the GOP nomination to succeed term-limited Gov. Sonny Perdue.
Though she's served only a single term as the state's elections chief, Ms. Handel sought to persuade delegates she has the tenacity and the cam- paign organization -- much of it culled from Mr. Perdue's former political team -- to match a more seasoned statewide campaigner such as Mr. Oxendine, Georgia's insurance commissioner since 1995.
"I've taken on some of the toughest challenges that life, a career and politics have to offer," Ms. Handel told delegates. "Yet with every new challenge, I've said, 'Bring it on!' "
Six Republicans have entered the 2010 race, with the primary still more than a year away. Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, widely considered the favorite, bowed out last month to undergo surgery for a degenerative spine condition. He'll seek re-election as lieutenant governor.
Mr. Oxendine, who announced his candidacy more than a year ago, took Ms. Handel's barbs in stride.
He acknowledged them when he took the stage Friday, but refrained from attacking in kind.
"First off, I'm a little puzzled," Mr. Oxendine told the crowd. "I'm not sure what I'm supposed to 'bring on.' As far as I'm concerned, good conservative values for Georgia -- that's what we need to bring on."
Mr. Oxendine won raucous applause for his pledge to end the state income tax.
Mr. Oxendine and Ms. Handel are the only contenders who have previously won statewide office. But none of the remaining four GOP candidates are novices.
The convention Friday was the gubernatorial candidates' first chance to pitch their campaigns to some of the Georgia GOP's most active supporters.
Still, there's plenty of time before the primary on July 20, 2010.
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Oxendine did himself in when he took the excessive campaign contributions. There is only one reason anyone gives a candidate excessive contributions in violation ot the State Ethics Rules. Influence.