Despite long odds, Dalton mayor considers challenging Deal | www.myajc.com

via Despite long odds, Dalton mayor considers challenging Deal | www.myajc.com.

Dalton’s City Hall is an unlikely springboard to the state’s top office, but Mayor David Pennington seems eager to try his luck.

The conservative mayor has been stumping across Georgia threatening to bring a tea party-tinged challenge against Gov. Nathan Deal. He says he’ll abstain only if a challenger he views as better than him emerges, but that seems unlikely. Pennington is nothing if not confident in himself.

His quest for office — the word quixotic does come to mind — has ruffled feathers within his own party as he bashes the governor over ethics reform, health care spending, tax cuts and any other issue he thinks will gain traction on the right. His underlying message is that Democrats will return to power unless “true conservative” principles are embraced.

“Georgia will be devastated in the next recession. And by that point, the true liberals are going to say conservative principles have failed us,” he told a small crowd at a recent Forsyth County event. “But we haven’t had any conservative principles. We’ve had Republicans masquerading as conservatives. And if we don’t watch out, we’ll lose out.”