What’s the difference between Joe Biden surfing a blue wave in Georgia and President Donald Trump’s “beautiful red wall?” A yawning ideological divide that could reshape the state’s politics for the next decade. Here’s a look at two different — and extreme — scenarios.
How a blue wave plays out: This is the scenario Democrats have been dreaming of since Trump’s 2016 victory – a surge of liberal energy sweeps through Georgia, swamping remaining Republicans in deep-blue urban counties, reaching into more competitive territory in the suburbs and cutting into GOP margins in exurbs and rural areas. Black turnout hovers around the vaunted 30% mark, and Biden attracts roughly 30% of the white vote.
If it happens: A Democrat wins the presidential contest in Georgia for the first time since 1992. U.S. Rep. Lucy McBath easily holds her suburban Sixth District congressional seat and Carolyn Bourdeaux handily wins the Seventh District. Democrats hover near 60% of Gwinnett County and Jon Ossoff flirts with an outright win over U.S. Sen. David Perdue. Democrats net more than a dozen state legislative seats, and threaten incumbents in outlying seats, such as Emory Dunahoo of Gainesville and Ron Stephens of Savannah.
How a red wall plays out: Republicans reawaken conservatives in GOP strongholds, aided by soaring turnout in populous exurban counties. Democrats still sweep the inner suburbs, but their numbers hover in the low 50s and their partially offset in rural areas where Republicans manage to wring out even more votes.
If it happens: Trump keeps Georgia in the GOP column, keeping alive an unbroken string of presidential victories since 1996. Perdue avoids a runoff against Ossoff, though Handel and McCormick still struggle to defeat their Democratic opponents. Republicans hold Democrats to only a handful of state legislative pickups, mostly in Gwinnett. House Minority Leader Bob Trammell loses his Luthersville-based seat, succumbing to the million-dollar GOP effort to oust him.
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Republican insiders may have already accepted defeat in the Sixth District congressional contest, according to a new report by Politico focused on the growing strength of Democrats in suburbs across the nation:
Democrats poured money into a nationally watched special election for Georgia's 6th Congressional District in 2017 and lost by 4 points a seat Republicans won handily for decades. Then, Democrat Lucy McBath eked out a win a year later. Now, as private polling showed McBath with a double-digit lead — and Joe Biden up by a similar margin — Republicans quietly chose not to spend money trying to win it back in the closing weeks of the election.
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Today’s print column in the AJC also focuses on shifting suburbia, and begins thusly:
Nineteen years ago, a Georgia governor succeeded in bringing down a state flag that dripped with Confederate symbolism. The act helped send Democrats into an exile that is only now coming to an end. If not Tuesday, then soon.
We do not know who will carry this state – Donald Trump or Joe Biden. Yet the not knowing is significant. In Georgia, presidential uncertainty hasn't made it to November since 1992.
And regardless of the outcome, we do know who will lose on this Election Day – Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and those who think a future can still be built on what remains of their legacy.
Count them among the casualties of a rising, suburban-driven political dynamic in which mythologies like the Lost Cause and its internet-birthed cousin, QAnon, become a badge of minority status.
“We are moving past the Confederacy. There still are some hangers-on. But the Civil War is finally drawing to a close," said Roy Barnes, now 72. It was Barnes who engineered the replacement of the 1956 state flag and its dominant Confederate battle emblem. At bottom, the banner was a symbolic middle finger raised during the fight over segregation...
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Credit: TNS
Credit: TNS
Gov. Brian Kemp announced an Election Day overhaul of his top leadership team.
Weeks after tapping Trey Kilpatrick as his new chief of staff, Kemp appointed two veteran state officials as his top deputies.
Caylee Noggle, who served as his interim chief of staff, as deputy chief of operations. And Bert Brantley, the former chief operating officer to the state department of economic development, will be his deputy chief of external affairs.
Candice Broce, Kemp’s former chief spokeswoman and deputy executive counsel, will now serve as the office’s chief operating officer. Kelly Farr will pull double-duty as Kemp’s chief financial officer while also remaining as director of the Office of Planning and Budget.
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In a WSB Radio interview, Gov. Brian Kemp said this morning that he had received his absentee ballot on Monday and would be dropping it off today. The governor has been self-quarantining after coming in contact with a coronavirus-infected U.S. Rep. Drew Ferguson, R-West Point.
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On Twitter, many of you are pointing us to a last-minute Trafalgar Group poll of Georgia. But the link to said poll is dead, and so we will hold fire.
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If presidential politics were the MLB, we would say that Georgia has just made it to the show. The New York Times has made us one of three eastern coast “needle” states it will watch to roughly estimate the direction of the national contest. The newspaper’s reasoning:
These states give us the kind of data we need to offer accurate estimates of the final vote. They report the results in unmatched detail, so our estimates might even be better than usual in these states.
Better still, these states count their votes relatively quickly. They have experience with absentee voting, and they close their polls early in the night. Much of the vote in North Carolina and Florida is expected to be counted by 8 p.m. Eastern.
…If Joe Biden wins even one of these states, he is a solid favorite to win the presidency. If President Trump wins all three, both candidates have realistic paths to the presidency.
With all that in mind, we wish Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger well tonight, and pass along this Twitter message from Dan Primack, a business editor over at Axios:
This morning, 50 secretaries of state will wake up with the same prayer: “Please don't let the whole country know my name tomorrow."
