In quiet conversations and public forums, activists and organizers such as Clark are raising sharp questions over how a once-ascendant party that celebrated Joe Biden’s flip in 2020 and U.S. Senate wins in 2021 and 2022 suffered such a grievous defeat.

Instead of gearing up for lengthy litigation over a tight Georgia race, as many party figures expected this week, they are trying to come to grips with a state that moved further to the right — and a nation soon to be governed under Trump’s political mandate.

Finger-pointing was expected after Trump’s 120,000-vote victory in Georgia, roughly 10 times bigger than Biden’s 2020 win. Even some critics of the party concede a more fine-tuned operation couldn’t have overcome the more systemic shortfalls of the national campaign.

Still, interviews with more than a dozen Democratic figures, including key activists and elected officials, revealed painful rifts over the party’s future as the focus shifts toward opposing Trump’s agenda in Congress and preparing for the 2026 midterms.

The loss here has some questioning Harris’ strategy and messaging in Georgia, which key Democrats said neglected reports that growing numbers of working-class and male voters were shifting more sharply toward Trump.

Other Democrats have cast blame on the Democratic Party of Georgia, which they said didn’t act aggressively enough to motivate liberal and moderate voters who powered Biden’s narrow victory in 2020 to rally behind Harris this election.

“We didn’t match the Republican energy. I wish we had more from our state party,” said state Rep. Jasmine Clark, who narrowly thwarted a GOP challenge in her Gwinnett County-based district.

“I felt like I was on my own,” she said. “Georgia is a battleground state, and our effort in state level races, which I truly believe only helps prop up the top of the ticket, was limited.”

Olivia Bowdoin for the AJC

Olivia Bowdoin for the AJC

Several pinned the blame on U.S. Rep. Nikema Williams, who was first elected to the voluntary job in 2019, before she won her congressional seat. As a U.S. House member, she can raise federal dollars but is largely restricted from raising money on behalf of state or local candidates.

“We need a state party chair that legally can raise nonfederal dollars. The primary job of the state party chair is fundraising,” said Daniel Halpern, one of Georgia’s top Democratic financiers. “And she legally cannot raise the majority of the party’s budget in that job.”

Williams said the party needs a “course correction” in an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s “Politically Georgia” podcast. But she also fiercely defended her record, calling herself the “most successful chair of a Democratic Party in our state’s history” as she noted statewide wins on her watch.

“We’ve made tremendous strides. Do we still have more work to do? Absolutely. Are there things that we should have done differently? Absolutely,” said Williams, who first was elected vice chair of the party in 2011 and was voted as chair in 2019.

“But we are continuing to move the needle forward. We won historic victories in 2020 and 2022, and we’ve continued to make gains,” Williams said. “This is the first cycle that Georgia has received the investment of a battleground state. And we’re not going to sit here and pretend as if we’re in the same place we were in 2011.”

‘You can’t possibly do both’

There’s no minimizing the scope of Trump’s victory. Four years after losing the state by fewer than 12,000 votes, Trump bested Harris by roughly 200,000 ballots on Tuesday — improving on his vote share in more than 130 of Georgia’s 159 counties and limiting his losses in deep-blue metro Atlanta.

Georgia was no anomaly. Of the seven battleground states, Trump won five and is leading in the two others. He narrowed margins in Democratic-friendly states such as New Jersey and New York. And he built on his party’s white base of support by making gains with Black and Hispanic voters.

With a victory that extensive, even the most robust state Democratic Party effort might not have mattered. But several of the party’s critics described a ham-handed party infrastructure that at times was more of an obstacle than a help.

Nate Rich, who chairs the Cherokee County Democrats, said just about every decision he tried to make was delayed or bottlenecked. He described run-ins with “painfully rude” party staffers and weekly zoom calls that were so banal they were “insulting.”

“I’ve never seen a more dysfunctional organization in my life,” Rich said. “I can’t stress enough how much the party’s bottom has fallen out across the state. I don’t want to air dirty laundry, but we’ve got to force tough conversations.”

One of them, he said, was about a change in the state party’s leadership, starting with Williams.

“The Democratic Party of Georgia needs a total reorganization, all the way up to the top,” Rich said. “No disrespect to the chairwoman. But being a congresswoman is a full-time job, and being the chair of a swing state is a full-time job. You can’t possibly do both.”

Parin Chheda, the Democratic chair of a key Cobb County district, said he was left fumbling for data about local voters. He added that he felt his warnings that the party was poised to nominate a far-right Republican masquerading as a Democrat for a U.S. House seat, meanwhile, went ignored.

“The Democratic Party of Georgia was asleep at the wheel. This is not a personal attack on Nikema Williams. I don’t know her or her staff,” Chheda said. “But as a district chair, I had zero support from the party.”

Alyssa Pointer / Alyssa.Pointer@

Alyssa Pointer / Alyssa.Pointer@

Others accused the party of not devoting enough resources to down-ticket contests.

Daniel Blackman, the Democratic nominee for a Public Service Commission seat in 2020, noted that Bobby Baker’s 1992 victory in a PSC race made him the first Republican elected statewide since Reconstruction — and preceded steady GOP gains.

“We need to broaden our footprint and start thinking outside metro Atlanta — and that’s a state party issue, not a local one,” said Blackman, who also called for Williams’ ouster.

“We had a lot of momentum,” he said, “but we haven’t built out a bench or cultivated as many voters outside of metro Atlanta.”

‘Emotions are high’

Theirs was not a unanimous view. Savannah Mayor Van Johnson praised work from the “energized state party” while he questioned the overall Democratic strategy.

“Across the state, Trump was chipping away. It wasn’t big wins. He didn’t turn anybody, but he just kept chipping, chipping away at margins,” Johnson said. “I think we could have done the same thing, but it just didn’t happen.”

Katelyn Myrick/AJC

Katelyn Myrick/AJC

And Marcus Flowers, a longtime Williams ally who unsuccessfully ran for a U.S. House seat in 2022, said the frustration was easy to understand. But he said the vitriol toward Williams and other party leaders is misplaced.

“At the end of the day there’s always going to be those looking to cast blame, but this ain’t on the DPG leadership,” Flowers said. “I’ll leave it at that. There’s much work to be done in the coming months and years for the Democratic Party as a whole.”

Several senior party officials, meanwhile, said tough internal conversations about the party’s strategy and trajectory were already underway.

Matthew Wilson, a former legislator who is the party’s first vice chair, said Williams is the right person to lead those conversations because of her experience in the U.S. House and decades of work at the grassroots level in Georgia.

“We have a stronger state party because she brings those things to the table,” he said.

Clark, the Gwinnett legislator who said she felt abandoned by her party, is still smarting from a hard-fought campaign against a tough GOP opponent. But she said she’s not quite certain how Democrats should address the state party’s shortcomings.

“My mom used to always say never go grocery shopping when you’re hungry and never get a haircut when you’re angry,” she said. “Emotions are a bit high right now, so I don’t want to speak on what should happen next.”

Staff writer Adam Van Brimmer contributed to this report.