Cain Is Able: Meet the black conservative who has joined the Georgia Senate race.

A candidate recently kicked off his very first race for public office- and within days, conservatives were buzzing about his potential as a vice-presidential nominee. Novice candidates don't typically generate such ambitious speculation, but Herman Cain, 57, is not the typical Republican candidate. The latest addition to Georgia's GOP primary field for the U.S. Senate is a descendant of slaves and sharecroppers who has returned home to Atlanta, in the hope of being sent to Washington, after a successful career as an entrepreneur, national business leader, and motivational speaker. While conservatives delight at the prospect of a black senator on the national stage skillfully making the case for fundamental conservative reform, liberals face a different prospect: One newspaper declared that the former CEO of Godfather's Pizza "may be the national Democratic Party's worst nightmare."

Trying to hold the seat of retiring Democratic senator Zell Miller is already a nightmarish task for Democrats who hope to win back the Senate. Last November, Republican Saxby Chambliss upset incumbent senator Max Cleland with 53 percent of the vote, and Democrats are having trouble coming up with a candidate to run in 2004 in a state where President Bush is extremely popular. Because whoever wins the GOP primary is heavily favored to capture Georgia's open seat, Herman Cain is joining a field that already includes two incumbent congressmen who enjoy broad support among party activists.

Rep. Johnny Isakson, who won a special election in 1999 to succeed Newt Gingrich, was the first candidate to declare his intention to run for the Senate, and he has reportedly raised over $2 million for his third statewide race. In May, Rep. Mac Collins, who is serving his sixth term in Congress, announced his candidacy. Rounding out the field is another black businessman, Al Bartell, who ran unsuccessfully for lieutenant governor last year.

Isakson and Collins are well known to Georgia's conservative voters, while Herman Cain has been winning enthusiastic support among conservatives active in the national policy arena. "He's the Bush compassionate conservative writ large," according to Joel Rosenberg, who worked with Cain when the businessman served as co-chairman of Steve Forbes's 2000 presidential campaign.

Cain's conservative message has special credibility thanks to the powerful way in which he tells his own inspiring story; his presentation of it has made him a hit on the motivational-speaking circuit. Cain and his brother grew up in Atlanta sharing the three rooms of "half of a house" with his mother (a domestic worker) and his father (a barber, chauffeur, and janitor). Cain shares his conviction about the limitless possibilities provided by the American system when he explains that his father worked three jobs in order to buy a house in the suburbs when Cain was in the eighth grade. Graduating at the top of his high-school class, but unable to attend a segregated University of Georgia, Cain graduated from Atlanta's Morehouse College in 1967 with a degree in mathematics.

After working briefly for the Department of the Navy, he began his spectacular rise up the corporate ladder. He was vice president of Pillsbury, and vice president of Burger King; he became president of the debt-ridden Godfather's Pizza franchise in 1986. He balanced the books-and two years later bought the company. Cain serves on the boards of numerous corporations as well as that of Morehouse College. He is an associate minister, and occasionally preaches, at Atlanta's Antioch Baptist Church.

Cain earned admiration outside the business community when he made headlines in April 1994 by challenging President Bill Clinton on health-care reform during a televised town-hall meeting. As CEO of the Nebraska-based chain of 525 restaurants with 10,000 employees, and chairman of the board of the National Restaurant Association, Cain had visited 19 states in his campaign against Clinton's proposal to force employers to buy insurance for all employees, including part-timers. Arguing that the plan would kill jobs, Cain took the floor at the town meeting to say, "Mr. President, with all due respect, your calculation . . . is incorrect." Even his competitors cheered. Frank Meeks, owner of 53 Washington, D.C.-area Domino's Pizza stores, called the Godfather's CEO "my new hero."

The year after his success in helping mobilize the business community against government-run health care, Cain-also a former chairman of the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank-served on the national tax commission chaired by Jack Kemp. He favors scrapping the "seven-million-word mess" of the current tax code in favor of a consumption tax, and he plans to make a Social Security reform that would permit workers to divert payroll taxes to personal retirement accounts a centerpiece of his campaign. The candidate explains that he looks forward to preaching the case for far-reaching conservative reform to black Georgians in the hope of attracting these voters to his cause in the open primary next year. "The fact that the life expectancy of an African-American male is now 68 years of age, and the life expectancy of a white male is 75 years of age, says to me that there is not much liberty in African- Americans' subsidizing the Social Security system," he declares. Alex St. James, chairman of the Washington-based African-American Republican Leadership Council, is among Cain's most enthusiastic supporters. He argues that the pro-life conservative candidate will have a broad appeal, because all Georgians can identify with his "achieving the American dream."

Sadie Fields, head of the Christian Coalition in Georgia, who plans to meet with Cain soon to discuss his candidacy, says that he "looks like an ideal Republican candidate, but our people know little or nothing about him." She allows that that can change in the next 14 months, but notes that Isakson, with a Coalition rating of 92 percent, and Collins, who has a perfect score from the conservative group, have already locked up key endorsements. Merle Black, a political scientist at Emory University, also thinks that Cain will have an uphill fight against some strong opponents. He notes that Isakson defined himself as a liberal on social issues in his 1996 Senate primary race, but thinks his voting record in Congress will help him overcome that image, while Collins is an appealing "working-class Republican" who should do especially well in rural Georgia. Black believes that the pizza CEO might be attempting to "open a franchise against people who have been selling in the neighborhood for a long time. It doesn't mean you don't like the guy's pizza, you just like the other guy's more."

Cain's campaign video shows today's successful business leader reminiscing about growing up in segregated Georgia. It captures his commanding presence and the powerful message he would deliver as the "New Voice" of Georgia's conservative Republicans. Many conservatives are fervently hoping that Georgia voters will listen.