Georgia U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss won’t run for re-election in 2014. Some pundits and media have speculated he would have lost his re-election bid anyway, but Chambliss said Monday he was not concerned about his chances.

In his first public appearance since announcing his decision to leave the Senate, Chambliss was at the University of Georgia to introduce a speech by his friend and fellow senator, Mark Warner of Virginia.

Georgia’s senior senator said he wasn’t worried at all about his re-election effort – and he didn’t need a poll to tell him he would’ve returned to Washington.

“I didn’t have to do a poll,” Chambliss said. “I can do a poll in the grocery store at home or walking down the street of Moultrie or Atlanta or wherever. And when people come up to you and say the kinds of things that were being said to me, it gave me a great feeling.”

Chambliss said again Monday that the recent debates over the debt ceiling and the fiscal cliff show how unproductive things have become in Washington.

“Here we were, headed off this fiscal cliff that was a very predictable crisis, and yet there was not the willingness to find that common ground,” he said. “That’s not what Saxby Chambliss is all about.”

Chambliss and Warner, a Democrat, are part of the bipartisan “Gang of Six” senators who have been trying to put together a far-reaching deficit-reduction plan.

Tags: University of Georgia, Saxby Chambliss, re-election, mark warner