When Democrat Michael Coles announced for Congress against Newt Gingrich, the audience was filled with friends, supporters and a hostile, blue-furred Cookie Monster. The costume, worn by a Gingrich backer, was a dig at Coles' background. He is the self-made multimillionaire founder of the 400-store Great American Cookie Co. But the fact that Newt supporters not only showed up to heckle Coles but actually dressed for the occasion may indicate something else--anxiety that come November this spend-whatever-it-takes cookie tycoon could gobble up their man.
Gingrich's popularity has ebbed since the heady early days of the Contract with America. His 33% approval rating in a May TIME/CNN poll of U.S. voters was only 9 points higher than Nixon's was before he resigned the presidency. It is an anti-Newt backlash that, Georgia Democrats believe, has occurred back home as well. While a February poll by the Gingrich campaign indicated that 75% of likely voters in his district think the Speaker deserves re-election, the Coles operation claims that in its own surveys 47% of Gingrich constituents say he is not performing well in the job.
Still, Georgia's Sixth Congressional District, which cuts across some of Atlanta's most affluent suburbs, is not exactly Democratic territory. It is one of the wealthiest congressional districts in the country (its $47,000 median household income ranks 23rd of 435 districts) and strongly Republican (56% of voters in the Sixth backed George Bush in 1992). But centrist Democrats like Georgia Governor Zell Miller and Senator Sam Nunn have also run strongly in the Sixth, and Democrats insist that Gingrich's abrasive personality is turning off voters across the board. Says Steve Anthony, executive director of the Democratic Party of Georgia: "If we can show the voters that our candidate fits the profile they want but with a more positive demeanor, they will go with him."
Coles, in fact, has a profile that could have been lifted directly from the entrepreneurial lore of GOPAC, the Gingrich-inspired fund-raising operation. Coles and a partner began business in 1977 with $8,000 in start-up cash, a location at the Atlanta area's Perimeter Mall and so little cookie-baking smarts that his first batch burned and the fire department showed up. Two decades later, his company operates in 38 states and has annual sales of about $100 million. He has pushed hard since he was eight, when a fire at his father's rag-recycling business forced the family into bankruptcy. Coles did yard work in the neighborhood to bring in money, eventually hiring others in his enterprise. He held two jobs in high school and never attended college. At 31, he founded a clothing company and then turned to cookies.
Coles has also triumphed over physical adversity. After a near fatal motorcycle accident in 1977, doctors told him he would never walk again unaided. But Coles struggled back and is today a champion bicyclist; he once set a Southern transcontinental record for his 11-day trek from Savannah, Georgia, to San Diego. Says Coles campaign manager Kate Head: "This is a guy who believes in the American Dream."