He also was touted as a true evangelical Christian, which I'm sure gained many votes from conservatives who (foolishly, as it turned out) believed he'd actually govern like one.
Yeah, darnit, that's very true. We in Georgia are still finding bitter fruit from his "legacy" as a "reform Governor." I forgot to mention that one leg of his platform ( eerily like Clinton, later ) was making a big deal about all the allegedly successful reforms he'd driven through as Governor.
What he did was take small, scattered offices that were dispersed across the State, and weld them into big, centralized bureaucracies in Atlanta.