Georgia is still reeling with excitement at being the first crack in the Republican red wall of the deep South. Georgia Democrats could feel Joe Biden’s narrow but important win coming. Now, with the two U.S. Senate seats on the line to determine control of the upper chamber for Biden's first two years, the country has a front-row seat to watch us demonstrate that Biden's win was no fluke.
Democrats’ 18-year journey through the Georgia political wilderness began in 2002, when U.S. Senator and Vietnam war hero Max Cleland was defeated by ads charging that he was palling around with Osama bin Laden. That same year, Democratic Governor Roy Barnes was unseated by long-shot candidate Sonny Perdue (first cousin to now-Senator David Perdue), who ran animated commercials depicting Barnes as a “Rat King.”
Thus ended approximately 140 years of Democratic domination in Georgia. No surprise, then, that in our present bare-knuckled fight for a Georgia Democratic Renaissance, the Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue Senate campaigns—when they are not ripping their own party apart—are running improbable ads that Jon Ossoff is a Chinese Communist operative and Rev. Raphael Warnock is a terrorist sympathizer. This theatre of the absurd has not failed Republicans, yet.
But this time feels different. We have over 300,000 COVID-19 deaths due to Republican governing incompetence. The murders of Ahmaud Arbery and Rayshard Brooks have sharpened the acknowledgement of ubiquitous injustice and have galvanized voters of good conscience. The closing of 10 rural hospitals in Georgia, staggering unemployment, and businesses failing daily have voters engaged. Ossoff and Warnock know that and are taking this opportunity to make political history in Georgia.
Warnock hails from Savannah, is a member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, and is a renowned Black minister—all of which gives him a statewide structural network that has been underestimated by Republicans. Warnock’s odds are bolstered by Republican congressman Doug Collins’ undermining of Loeffler as Collins wishes to either primary in 2022 Governor Brian Kemp, the man who appointed Loeffler to the Senate, or run against a future Senator Warnock, who would be up again in 2022 when his special election term expires. Ossoff is the Atlanta and national political phenomenon who is believed to have energized young voters under 40, giving Georgia the largest young voter turnout in the country in November. It's helped Ossoff that Perdue confirmed his reputation for political entitlement by not showing up for their televised debate.
There has been plenty of analysis of the increased Democratic turnout in the voter dense metro-Atlanta area. Voters of color—particularly Black women—did as they always do and voted in huge numbers to save America. Even white college-educated/suburban women seemed to have gotten the memo, outperforming their prior turnout for Democrats. Yet, it would be a mistake to assume that the metro-Atlanta area accounted for Biden’s victory all by itself.
Georgia political demographics are not yet at a point where Atlanta alone can carry the entire state for Democrats. Biden won Atlanta’s Fulton County by 243,000 votes. But in the five next largest city/county jurisdictions after Atlanta (Athens, Augusta, Columbus, Macon, and Savannah), Biden’s combined margin was 267,000 votes. That’s a lot of necessary votes when you consider his 12,000-vote margin of victory. National Democratic leaders now recognize this, as evidenced by Vice President-elect Kamala Harris’ visit this week to Columbus in southwest Georgia to stump for the two Democrats.
Seeking votes outside of the Atlanta core does not mean having to move to the political right—that's a mistake too many national pundits and consultants make. Rural Georgia voters may be socially conservative, but they are otherwise progressive at heart. Farmers, shrimpers, and fishermen believe the climate crisis is real and want to partner with the government to curb its impact. Georgia farmers want marijuana legalized, because it would be a new cash crop. People who live in Perry, Georgia, don't want to be shot at Walmart any more than anyone else. Whether because of the federal agricultural partnership, the pride in county public schools, the reliance on the U.S. Post Office, or the desperation for rural hospitals, voters in rural Georgia appreciate and depend on government programs. It's just that Democrats rarely speak in rural-progressive terms, and in that, they cede too many votes.
Warnock worked the outlying counties before the Nov. 3 election with COVID-safe trips and appearances on local media in places like Albany and Brunswick. And he brought yard signs. In Georgia, a yard sign is like a Hallmark card: it shows you care. Warnock speaks with ease of life in small-town Georgia. He just seems familiar there, and he weaves in his progressive ideals with the proposed solutions to the challenges they face. Ossoff did not till that same field; instead, he energized his wheelhouse in the Atlanta suburbs and among the youth vote, all of whom must show up again to win the run-off. Ossoff invested heavily in Atlanta television, and it carried his message well. (I know, I ran against him, and lost, in the Democratic Primary).
From the beginning, the two candidates have had different geographic strategies. And that is why Ossoff and Warnock are running as a ticket. Votes are fungible. It doesn’t matter where the votes come from, you just need more of them to win. In running as a ticket, the two share their respective electoral strengths and cover the other’s electoral weaknesses. The brand of the ticket also creates its own synergy—think Clinton/Gore or Obama/Biden. There's something about a good political bromance that captures voters' imagination.
Georgia was never as "red" as many believed it to be. We just won't vote for cowards—those who do not have the conviction of their governing philosophies. A Democrat masquerading as “Republican lite” will not work here. Rural Georgians know what a Republican looks like. If they wanted to vote Republican, they know how to find that on the ballot. We haven't been fooling anyone these 18 years of false starts. As Stacey Abrams first demonstrated in this new era, Georgia Democratic candidates do not have to be mealy-mouthed about their beliefs. They must have the courage to speak of Democratic progressive governing values and the ability to explain how that enhances Atlantan lives and non-Atlantan, rural lives. All Georgians are hungry for that.
Teresa Tomlinson is the former mayor of Columbus, Georgia, former Democratic U.S. Senate candidate, current chair of the Georgia Blue Project, a PAC devoted to making Georgia a solid Democratic stronghold, and a partner at the law firm of Hall, Booth, Smith, P.C.
