‘King George’ in Buchanan’s Sights After Boost From Georgia Voters : Primary: Bush’s rival is now talking nomination as his strong second-place finish shows he was not a one-state wonder in New Hampshire.

Conservative challenger Patrick J. Buchanan claimed a moral victory in Georgia Tuesday night, telling jubilant supporters that his second strong primary showing against President Bush proves he can unseat “King George” and win the Republican nomination in August.

“My friends, how sweet it is,” Buchanan said over the din of a cheering, hooting, flag-waving crowd of several hundred supporters in Atlanta. “. . . I think King George is getting the message now.”

Although Bush beat Buchanan in Georgia, Maryland and Colorado, the three states where they were both on the ballot Tuesday, Buchanan was drawing sizable chunks of the vote--30% or more in all three places.

“They said after New Hampshire that he’s just a one-state candidate,” Buchanan said with a smile. “My friends, tonight we are a one-nation candidate.”

Buchanan’s showing in Georgia hovered around 36%, close to his 37% showing in economically depressed New Hampshire. The White House had discounted his showing in the Feb. 18 contest as “unique” because of the economy. But that could not explain Georgia, which has an unemployment rate of about 3%--compared with New Hampshire’s 7.8%.

Georgia showed “a major erosion of support for George Bush,” said Merle Black, an expert on politics at Emory University in Atlanta. Black said the erosion was less a result of economic worries than the result of a “widespread conviction among voters that the President doesn’t stand for anything.”

Buchanan devoted only a fraction of the time and money he spent in New Hampshire to the campaign here. He began campaigning intensively five days before the primary and spent about $500,000 in the state, mostly on advertising, compared with the 10 weeks and $2 million in New Hampshire. But he did outspend Bush 2 to 1 in advertising, and both their ad campaigns were negative.

“We didn’t have $50 million and Air Force One and all the surrogates and the attack ads and all those kennel-fed conservatives up in Washington,” Buchanan said. “We just had . . . Asphalt One”--a reference to the rented bus in which he crisscrossed rural Georgia over the last week.

“We are winning because we got energy and we got ideas and we got vision and they got none,” he said. “We are fresh and they are tired and they are yesterday and we are tomorrow.”

His strong showing in a state where the Republican Party Establishment was solidly behind Bush was expected to give him momentum for next week’s round of primaries on Super Tuesday, when 11 states are voting.

Nothing less than “fate and the future of the Buchanan campaign” was riding on Georgia, he told students at a Christian school in South Carolina, where he campaigned earlier in the day before returning to Atlanta.

“If we do as well in Georgia today as we did in New Hampshire, this campaign will go all the way to Houston,” Buchanan said, referring to the Republican National Convention on Aug. 17.

Later, at his boisterous post-election party in the ballroom of the Ramada Renaissance Hotel near the Atlanta airport, he told supporters that he listened to the song “Georgia On My Mind” during a riverboat fund-raising cruise in Greenville, S.C., earlier in the day. But from now until June, he said, his campaign’s theme song is going to be “California, Here I Come.”

Buchanan hopes to do well in California’s Republican winner-take-all primary on June 2. But he concedes that to get that far, he will have to find a state in which he can beat Bush in a primary.

His strategists believe that Louisiana, one of the 11 states holding primaries or caucuses March 10, may offer him the best opportunity between now and the California primary to hold Bush to under 50% of the Republican vote.

The Delegate Tally

The delegate count according to the Associated Press, all contests to date.

DEMOCRATS: 2,144 needed to win nomination Delegates Bill Clinton: 201 Paul E. Tsongas: 105 Bob Kerrey: 22 Tom HarkinL: 78 Jerry Brown: 34 Uncommitted: 219 REPUBLICANS: 1,105 needed to win nomination Delegates George Bush: 148 Patrick J. Buchanan: 20 Uncommitted: 5