Bowers Concedes Georgia Governor’s Race
Georgia's "Mr. Clean," whose middle name is "v. Hardwick," finds that an out adulterer isn't gubernatorial material in a state with a sodomy law that he defended

 By PlanetOut

Former Georgia state attorney general Michael Bowers, who successfully defended the state's right to criminalize private homosexual acts between consenting adults before the U.S. Supreme Court in the landmark case "Bowers v. Hardwick," on July 28 conceded the race for the Republican gubernatorial nomination to Guy Millner. It was the first Georgia GOP gubernatorial race since 1990 not to require a run-off. Millner will face Democratic state Representative Roy Barnes and Libertarian Jack Cashin in November; incumbent Democratic Governor Zell Miller has served the maximum three terms allowed by state law.

Bowers was expected to walk off with the Republican nomination when he declared his candidacy about a year ago, and to have a strong chance to become Georgia's first Republican governor since the Reconstruction era. After he quit his attorney general's post to pursue his campaign, however, he felt compelled to confess publicly that he had violated Georgia's law against adultery for more than a decade in an affair with a woman who initially was also married and worked in his office. Bowers, who is still married to his original wife, thereby shattered his "Mr. Clean" image, and apparently never regained the same level of confidence with his constituency. He lost to a man who has never held public office (having lost races for governor in 1994 and U.S. Senator in 1996), refused to appear in public debates, and had as his greatest strength $3-million of his own money to spend on his campaign.

After "Hardwick," Bowers was notable in two other high-profile legal situations involving gays and lesbians. The first was to successfully block Atlanta's first attempt to establish spousal benefits for the domestic partners of its gay and lesbian employees, as Bowers found that the city was infringing on the state's authority by redefining family relationships; Atlanta went on to rewrite and enact a new statute to the same effect. The second case was Bowers' own withdrawal of a job offer in the attorney general's office from attorney Robin Shahar, after he learned of her private religious celebration of her lesbian relationship. Shahar won a uniquely positive ruling from a 3-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals, only to have it overruled by the full appellate bench.

Bowers has been unemployed since resigning as state attorney general, and says he is now looking for a job.

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