When voters in the Republican runoff election were given the opportunity to choose the Sarah Palin-endorsed candidate Karen Handel for governor, they responded: "Thanks, but no thanks."

By the slim margin of 2,438 votes, Republicans have selected former U.S. Rep. Nathan Deal of Gainesville to carry the party banner into the governor's race this fall against Democratic nominee and former Gov. Roy Barnes.

It was a somewhat surprising development, especially after Palin showed up in Atlanta the day before the election to appear at a campaign rally with Handel. The event was packed with Palin fans who were so giddy about being in the vicinity of the former Alaska governor that some of them even dressed up to impersonate her.

As it turned out, Palin was not Handel's messiah and could not stop the late movement among GOP voters into Deal's column. Georgia Republicans have now punctured the myth that Palin was some kind of invincible mama grizzly whose magic touch would bring political victory to any candidate she blessed with her endorsement.

If you look at last week's runoff as a proxy for the 2012 presidential race, then Palin and Mitt Romney were both losers. On the other side, Newt Gingrich and Mike Huckabee experienced the thrill of victory after endorsing Deal.

Gingrich's endorsement and Huckabee's campaign visit to Georgia were more effective for Deal than Romney's endorsement and Palin's visit were for Handel.

"Getting Huckabee down to Gainesville on Sunday really, really solidified our campaign," said Brian Robinson, spokesman for the Deal campaign. "He did such a great job for us."

Huckabee agreed with that assessment, telling a reporter in an e-mail: "Check the poll numbers before I went and compare them to the election. You can draw your own conclusions."

Deal is proof that in politics, persistence pays off. There were several occasions over the past 15 months when it appeared that some external event or internal gaffe would knock him out of the race for governor, but Deal never gave up.

Throughout the campaign, the political experts thought Deal was spending money too quickly to keep his campaign going, but he got around that problem by lending his campaign $250,000 in personal funds.

There was a newspaper expose of the attempts by Deal's congressional staffers and Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle to preserve a lucrative business arrangement that brought large amounts of state dollars to a vehicle salvage firm that Deal co-owns in Gainesville.

There was the resulting ethics complaint and investigation into that business arrangement. The Office of Congressional Ethics issued a report that said Deal may have exceeded the allowable limits on outside income and used his staff to maintain the profitable business deal with the state.

There was Deal's politically incorrect reference to "ghetto grandmothers" in a speech about citizenship verification (he later apologized for the remark).

There was Deal's connection to the kooks who claim, despite documentary evidence showing otherwise, that President Barack Obama was born in Kenya and isn't qualified to be president (Deal sent a letter to the president telling him to produce a copy of his birth certificate).

There were the media reports, published about two weeks before the runoff election, that state Revenue Commissioner Bart Graham had received a federal subpoena to turn over documents about a meeting he had with the congressman's aides to discuss that business deal involving the vehicle salvage firm.

That prompted this remark by Handel's press spokesman: "What would truly destroy the party would be to nominate someone like Deal who is under a federal grand jury investigation and could be indicted or, heaven forbid, arrested at any moment."

Those are all the kinds of incidents that normally would blow up a political campaign, but Deal kept plugging away in the face of adversity. He also emphasized two issues that stir up strong feelings among some voters: bashing Handel for her moderate stance on gay issues and vowing to run every undocumented immigrant in Georgia back to the border.

In the end, Deal won the nomination and will now take on his former Georgia Senate colleague and fellow lawyer, Barnes, in the general election. I don't think we will see Palin return to the state for this campaign.

Tom Crawford is the editor of The Georgia Report, an Internet news service that covers government and politics in Georgia. His column appears Wednesdays and on gainesvilletimes.com.