ONE OF LAST WEEK'S hottest political topics was whether Democratic gubernatorial candidate Roy Barnes would be seen with President Obama when the president visited Atlanta on Monday.

Well, not only did Barnes successfully avoid that pitfall, he managed to reap a bonanza of free publicity that he probably wouldn't have gotten otherwise.

Obama came to Atlanta to deliver a speech to a group of disabled veterans and to attend a party fundraiser.

With Obama's popularity in Georgia low and trending lower, Barnes' challenge was to find a plausible reason for not being seen with the president, yet not so implausible that it offended the state's hard-line Democrats.

Barnes found it in Middle Georgia, where he conducted a private breakfast with area farmers in Forsyth and later had a press conference in Monroe County, where he was endorsed by two dozen area sheriffs.

His itinerary for the day later took him through Bainbridge, Thomasville and Donalsonville, a swing that no doubt will be the recipient of heavy coverage in today's Macon and other mid-state newspapers, as well as in that area's many weeklies. In addition, Barnes's decision to dodge the president was mentioned in numerous national stories as well, and of course in the stories in the state's bigger newspapers and on TV.

And frankly, the endorsement of Barnes by those sheriffs is likely to carry more weight with rural, undecided/independent voters than an endorsement by Obama would have.

A July poll by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research found Obama had only a 37 percent approval rating in Georgia. If anything, appearing with Barnes might have helped Obama just as much as it might have hurt Barnes.

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MEANWHILE, the monumental metro-area traffic jam prompted by the president's visit here didn't do him any favors.

Obama flew into Dobbins Air Reserve Base, as presidents have been doing for decades for security and logistical considerations. Traffic was shut completely down on Interstate 75 and certain access roads for his motorcade, and sheriff's deputies were posted at every overpass and intersection, as usual for such visits. Of course, the gripes about traffic from such visits have little to do with the party of the visiting president and everything to do with being delayed.

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TONIGHT'S meeting of the Cobb County Young Republicans will feature a debate between runoff contestants JoAnn Birrell and Earl Stine. The 7 p.m. event will take place at Jock's and Jills at the Galleria and will be moderated by MDJ edit page/AT editor Joe Kirby. Contact CCYR vice chair Katelyn Ledford at (407) 756-9992.

WILL GEORGIA REPUBLICANS be able to kiss-and-make-up at the end of the gubernatorial runoff between former Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel and former U.S. Rep. Nathan Deal, which seems to be getting uglier by the day? A failure to do so could be fatal in their fall campaign against Barnes.

Around Town noted on Saturday that the Cobb leadership committees for failed GOP gubernatorial hopefuls John Oxendine, Eric Johnson and Jeff Chapman had made their way en masse into the Deal camp in the days since the July 20 primary.

Will there be a similar armistice after the Aug. 10 runoff? If the present presumed front-runner, Handel, defeats Deal, will his supporters actively support their candidate's rival? And would that support be perfunctory, or truly translate to contributions of dollars and political elbow grease?

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ONE OF DEAL'S most outspoken Marietta supporters, Tricia Pridemore, is up in arms over Handel's use of a George Soros-funded group's allegations to attack Deal.

We suspect most AT readers, and most Cobb voters, were among the 400,000 Georgians who received copies over the weekend of a mailer by the Handel campaign attacking Deal's ethics and accusing him of corruption.

"Rep. Deal's abuse of his position and taxpayer resources to maintain a personally lucrative business deal does not reflect creditably on the House," the mailer quotes a group called CREW, an acronym for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

CREW, ostensibly nonpartisan, receives funding from Soros' Open Society Institute and the Streisand Foundation, among other liberal groups.

Soros is a billionaire financier who donated $23 million in 2004 to try to defeat George W. Bush and who has bankrolled an enormous array of liberal activist groups in recent years, including La Raza, MALDEF and the National Abortion Federation, which opposes all restrictions on abortion.

The flyer states that it was paid for by the Committee to Elect Karen Handel.

Pridemore, who heads the 9-12 Action Network, said she was disappointed that Handel would cite CREW and Soros as reasons to oppose a fellow Republican.

"The very enemy of all we hold dear is used as a marketing ploy to get Karen Handel the Republican nomination," Pridemore said. "I for one, am disappointed and outraged that George Soros, the Democracy Alliance, the Open Society Institute, CREW, and Speaker Pelosi's 2008 OCE initiative to slaughter the records of conservative leaders is being used by a Republican nominee in Georgia.

"There's nothing conservative about this. Either we support freedom and stand together against the political tools of the Left, or we fall."

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SPEAKING OF DEAL, the Deal Cobb committee will host a fundraiser at 7:30 a.m. Thursday at The Georgian Club with the goal of raising $50,000.

MAYOR TUMLIN is receiving high marks from news junkies and city hall watchers for televising all council meetings on the city's Web site. But some top city administrators may not be as enthralled with the new transparency.

The first night of the televised meetings on Wednesday, one of the first orders of business was to adopt the city's millage rate.

Councilman Jim King made the motion to adopt it, and Tumlin asked what the exact number was.

The city's finance director, Sam Lady, looked like he had been asked to translate the Rosetta stone. He turned to city manager Bill Bruton for help, but Bruton didn't know the answer either.

Lady had to run upstairs to go look it up.

Ouch!

The council ultimately adopted the 2.788 millage rate in a 6-0 vote with Van Pearlberg absent.

It doesn't get any more embarrassing than that. But on the bright side, that rate has remained the same since 2004.

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IS CHAIRING the 19-member Cobb Legislative Delegation "the kiss of death"? That question was posed by a local politico to Around Town. The answer, at least lately, seems to be "Yes."

Steve "Thunder" Tumlin (now mayor of Marietta) held the position as a Republican state rep from 2005 to 2008. Voters replaced him in the 2008 election with Democrat Pat Dooley, who got 8,448 votes to his 7,964.

The chairmanship then went to state Sen. John Wiles (R-Kennesaw), who was ousted from office in last week's Republican primary by small businessman Lindsey Tippins. Wiles received 7,765 votes to Tippins' 11,759.

State Rep. Sharon Cooper (R-east Cobb) says the delegation will likely have a called meeting after the general election this fall to vote in a new chairman. Until then, Wiles keeps the title, since he remains a state senator until the new General Assembly is seated the second Monday in January, she said.