When Jim Martin took over Georgia's Department of Human Resources in 2001, some friends were surprised. Running the state's unwieldy social services bureaucracy is seen as a sure ticket to political oblivion.
But for Martin it was a no-brainer.
"I've always taken the hard jobs where I thought I could make a difference," Martin said.
Labeled "a nice guy" by friends and foes alike, the bespectacled Martin is soft-spoken and almost professorial. Even supporters quietly worry he lacks the fire to make a serious run at Republican Saxby Chambliss in November. Martin, 62, already lost one statewide race - the 2006 contest for lieutenant governor - to Republican Casey Cagle.
Still, Martin insists that he's the best Democrat to defeat Chambliss and that he's up for the fight.
First he'll have to get past DeKalb County Chief Executive Officer Vernon Jones in Tuesday's runoff. Martin pulled 34 percent of the vote in the five-man Democratic primary held July 15. Jones earned 40 percent of the vote.
Martin has been portrayed as the hand-picked candidate of the Democratic leaders in Washington. He only entered the Senate race in April after being lobbied by party leaders who also pledged financial backing.
But Martin said he's no reluctant campaigner. He held out, he said, because he figured former Democratic Gov. Roy Barnes might enter the field.
"I knew what it was going to take to run statewide and I was willing to take that on because Saxby Chambliss needs to be defeated," Martin said in an interview with The Associated Press. "If someone with the stature of Roy Barnes had decided to get into the race there was no sense in me getting in."
He won his first campaign for the statehouse in 1982 - a 10-way race for a legislative seat representing parts of Atlanta. He went on to spend the next 18 years in the Legislature, rising to chair a key legal committee, while also maintaining a private law practice.
In 2001, his political track changed when then-Gov. Barnes called Martin to tell him that the state human resources commissioner had resigned.
"I said well, governor you need to do a national search but I want to apply. And the line sort of went dead he got so quiet," Martin recalled. "It was seen as a political dead end. But I had a passion for all of those programs."
He took over the department in September 2001 and soon had to implement deep budget cuts as the nation's economy struggled in the aftermath of the terror attacks.
Martin said he worked to streamline department operations, such as child support collections, to save money and help alleviate the impact of budget cuts on the children the department served.
But Jones and other political opponents have criticized Martin for heading the department at a time when children died under his watch.
Martin responded by saying those figures stayed flat while he was commissioner, and that he worked to make the investigations more transparent.
Normer Adams, executive director of the Georgia Association of Homes and Services for Children, praised Martin's leadership of the department.
"He was instrumental in moving DHR into the modern era when it came to child welfare," Adams said.
Still, Martin resigned under pressure following the beating deaths of two young children in state care. The deaths came after child welfare officials had received repeated complaints. He said he has no ill feelings about his departure and is proud of his tenure.
He said it's that experience - combined with his campaign for lieutenant governor - that prepared him for the Senate bid.
"I am plenty tough enough to take on Saxby Chambliss, make no mistake about it," he said.
(The Associated Press)
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