THE GEORGIA PLAYBOOK

By ADAM COHEN/ATLANTA

At a campaign stop in Athens, Georgia, recently, a woman in the audience tried to entrap Democratic Senate candidate Max Cleland with a liberal-baiting question: Could he explain to Georgia voters his traveling to Massachusetts to campaign for Edward Kennedy? Cleland, a Vietnam War triple amputee, responded that he knew Kennedy through the Senator's son, a fellow amputee, and that he went to praise Kennedy's work on behalf of veterans. By the time he had finished talking, Cleland had transformed a partisan attack into an eloquent speech that hewed closely to the values of his small-town Southern audience.

As the Democrats seek to recapture the Senate, they might want to look to Cleland as the candidate with the model playbook. This year's Republican version calls for tagging Democratic congressional candidates as hopelessly liberal, but Guy Millner, the millionaire businessman who is challenging Cleland for the seat of retiring Georgia legend Sam Nunn, is having a hard time making it stick. Millner notes darkly that "the Jane Fondas, the Ted Kennedys, all these kinds of people would love to see Max Cleland get elected." But so far, Georgia's increasingly conservative electorate seems to be resisting Millner's ideological barrage: a poll released last week put Cleland ahead, 49% to 37%.

Cleland's strong showing is due in part to his aggressive effort to seize the middle ground. He's running on such non-Democratic issues as term limits and a balanced budget, and has come out against gays in the military. Cleland has also distanced himself from President Clinton, who is not particularly popular in the state (polls show Clinton and Dole in a statistical dead heat). At the same time Cleland is reaching out to the Democratic base by supporting abortion rights and tying his opponent to the "extremist" Republican leadership in Congress. Democrats need to "stay in the sensible center" to win, Cleland says. "People want commonsense government."

But people also want heroes, and Cleland offers voters a life story full of sacrifice and struggle. He was a fresh-faced 6-ft. 3-in. former high school basketball star from Lithonia, Georgia, when he ignored the advice of family and friends and volunteered for combat duty in Vietnam. He lost two legs and an arm to a grenade explosion and, as he describes in his brutally honest memoir, Strong at the Broken Places, came home to battle indifferent medical care, bouts of depression and social rejection. Among the low points: going out on a date and, while crossing the street, sliding out of his wheelchair into oncoming traffic. Through sheer determination, Cleland was elected state senator from his hometown, headed up the Veterans Administration under President Carter and went on to become Georgia's top statewide vote getter as a three-term secretary of state.

The Millner forces complain that Cleland is "running on biography," saying he would rather talk about his life than the issues. "He does have difficulties, but those are not the criteria for a U.S. Senator," says Millner spokesman Stuart Roy. "Nor does it say how you will vote in the U.S. Senate." But Millner, who came within 33,000 votes of defeating Governor Zell Miller two years ago, has been equally aggressive about running on his own Horatio Alger-like biography. He went from working in his father's gas station at age 10 and putting himself through college selling pots and pans door to door, to founding Norrell Corp., a temp-services company that had $812 million in revenue last year. It is a rare campaign appearance where Millner does not mention his experience as a businessman--a "Christian businessman" before some audiences--and the need in Washington for more elected officials with his background.

Millner may make it to the Capitol yet. He is expected to outspend Cleland by as much as $2 million, much of it his own money, and to dominate television in the final days of the campaign. Millner is also keeping up a tireless schedule of personal appearances--he has traveled more than 46,000 miles across the state since January. And his party affiliation may help: the Republican vote has been growing rapidly in Georgia, and no Southern Democrat has won an open Senate seat since 1988. Still, if the polls are to be believed, Cleland could end the Democrats' losing streak. His much heralded biography would then have a new chapter, "The Senate Years."