It’s been almost two years since I drove south out of Atlanta to start my Georgia Politics Road Trip in the summer of 2021. I spread eight trips over 2,400 miles and three months. I wanted to see Georgia politics beyond the headlines and the polls and the horse-race politics headlines — and I did.
I went to Herschel Walker’s hometown of Wrightsville and the late House Speaker David Ralston’s favorite spot in Blue Ridge. I ate a “scrambled dog” in Columbus that has its own historical marker and met Mayor Tony Lamar in Talbotton, who just wanted the Piggly Wiggly to come back to town.
Mayors Lester Miller in Macon and Kelly Girtz in Athens were both struggling to contain crime in their communities, just like Atlanta, while mental illness was landing so many people in jails across Georgia that local sheriffs’ offices couldn’t handle the numbers.
I rode a steel-cage elevator to the top of a crane at the Georgia Ports Authority in Savannah, where prosperity and growth were soaking the coast. But one hour south in Brunswick, the far poorer coastal city was threatened with drowning by creeping climate change and rising seas.
I met elected leaders coming up with innovative solutions — and others hoping for a lucky break that might put their rural hometowns on a path to growth, or at least stave off extinction.
How are they all doing? I’ve wondered since then. Did everything turn out ok?
I spent the summer of 2022 covering the traditional nuts and bolts of politics, the rallies and polls and campaign ads of the midterm elections. And now I’m heading back out on the road again.
I’ll again be talking to voters and leaders and activists and personalities — all the people who make politics in Georgia come alive. I’ll also look to see what else we in Atlanta don’t know about our neighbors around the state.
Who are the leaders to watch? Which issues are changing or intensifying? Where is Georgia headed politically?
So much has happened since my last trip in 2021. Gov. Brian Kemp and U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock both won reelection, as did Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. In a year that Democrats like Stacey Abrams had hoped to make historic gains, Republicans swept every other statewide office in Georgia in 2022.
Republicans also expanded their numbers in Congress from eight to nine after Republican-led redistricting. And U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene became a household name all across the country, for better or worse.
Beyond the political headlines, other announcements came out of the governor’s office that could change some parts of rural Georgia forever.
In December of 2021, Kemp and Rivian announced that the electric truck maker will build a $5 billion factory between Social Circle and Rutledge. By the names of those little towns alone, you know the plant will bring the kind of explosive growth the communities east of Atlanta have never contemplated.
The same goes for Ellabell in Bryan County, where Hyundai has announced its plans for a $4.3 billion manufacturing “meta-plant” outside of Savannah. The massive complex will eventually mean 8,100 jobs at the primary plant alone. But how does a small town like Ellabell absorb that many new families and new faces, who all also need houses to live in, schools to attend, hospitals to go to, and probably a really big Target to shop at?
And will all of those new faces adapt to Georgia politics or make Georgia politics adapt to them?
Along with the good news that some parts of the state have gotten lately, other parts have continued to struggle. Gun violence is now commonplace all over the state. So is limited health care for poor communities and students struggling to learn without basic resources like internet access. Local newsrooms across Georgia struggle to find the resources to tell those stories.
The only place I know I’ll visit twice is the little town of Talbotton, where Mayor Lamar was searching for a way to reinvigorate the town’s shrinking population in middle Georgia. U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock’s Senate campaign used the town as a backdrop for a press conference just before the 2022 elections. Did anything change after that?
I’ll start my road trip next week and will report back in my next Sunday column. More trips and stories will follow from there.
All food, lodging, and local legend recommendations from the AJC’s intrepid readers are welcome. Send them my way at patricia.murphy@ajc.com.
And I’ll see you down the road.
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