The future depends on Georgia runoffs
In the weeks since the Nov. 3 presidential election, I’ve been vigorously courted. I live in Georgia, ground zero for control of the U.S. Senate and quite possibly for the direction of the whole country. The once reliably red state is purple now — but we’ll know better whether it’s a reddish or bluish purple after Tuesday’s Senate runoff races.
For weeks, I’ve been flooded with calls from activist groups asking, “Can we count on your vote?” The Jehovah’s Witnesses who once knocked on my door have been supplanted by the politically proselytizing couple who gave me leaflets and a black mask. Walter in Durham, N.C., Laura in Portland, Ore., Emily in Seattle and other concerned strangers have sent handwritten postcards urging my son and me to vote. Pollsters clamor for our opinions. Campaign literature piles high on the dining-room table.
The mudslinging television ads for incumbent Republicans Kelly Loe±er and David Perdue and Democratic challengers Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff illustrate just how contentious — and costly — these two races have become. The four candidates combined have already spent more than $480 million, according to Ad Age magazine.
Loe±er, an a±uent, white Atlanta businesswoman, portrays Warnock, a Black Atlanta minister raised in public housing, as a wild-eyed “radical liberal” bent on stoking socialism and squelching law enforcement. Warnock says Loe±er is “looking out for herself ” while accusing her of playing down the pandemic even as she profited from it. Perdue, a white businessman who once ran Dollar General variety stores, wants to “save America” from “socialists” such as Ossoff, a young former congressional aide and investigative journalist who counters by accusing Perdue of spending his time on business deals rather than Georgia constituents.
It’s exhausting — especially for the fact-checkers — but also exhilarating being part of one of the most consequential elections in modern times.
The world is well aware of former gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams’ political wizardry in energizing Georgia voters. But this election is taking place against a larger backstory of rapidly evolving demographics and hundreds of grass-roots organizations that have been pushing for change for years.
That change is arriving: In addition to electing their first Democratic presidential candidate since 1992, Georgians last month ushered in other seismic shifts. Three metro-Atlanta counties — Cobb, Gwinnett and
Henry — elected their first Black sheriffs. Those counties, along with five others, are now or soon will be headed by African Americans, four of whom are women.
Georgia is now home to thousands of Black professionals like myself who’ve returned to the South. Many of my friends — Black, White, Latino and others — moved here from other parts of the country for jobs and affordable homes. Young, educated, politically active people such as my 23-yearold son also are remaking the political landscape. The social and racial unrest this year are even more proof of that.
In the past two decades, Georgia has added more than 2 million voters, most of them in metro Atlanta, an area that accounted for nearly 60 percent of the 10.6 million people living in Georgia in 2019 — and one that has become increasingly Democratic over time. It’s a long way from the late 1980s when Ku Klux Klansmen openly solicited donations in Clayton County, the suburban Atlanta county where I live. Last month, Clayton delivered the state’s highest percentage — 85 percent — of Democratic votes for Joe Biden.
President Donald Trump has been “a real catalyst” for getting out the Democratic vote in Georgia, according to Pat Pullar, a political consultant and former deputy director of the Democratic Party of Georgia. But there was “significant groundwork” underway in Georgia even before Trump. Clayton now has dozens of Black female elected officials, a remarkable achievement due in part to groups such as Black Women’s Roundtable and the Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda, which was founded by the Rev. Joseph Lowery, the late civil rights icon.
With the exception of 2008’s election of Barack Obama, the momentum surrounding this runoff election is unlike anything I’ve seen in my 26 years in Georgia. Some 168,293 Georgians cast votes on Dec. 14, the first day of in-person early voting, surpassing the first day of early voting in the presidential election.
Still, I’m reluctant to predict the outcome of the Senate runoffs. Keep in mind, Democrats haven’t won a statewide runoff election in Georgia since 1988, and 7 in 10 white Georgians voted last month to reelect Trump. But whatever the outcome, I’m glad to have a front-row seat for it all. It’s funny, but a place like Georgia can seem like it will never change — until it does.
Tammy Joyner, an Atlanta-based journalist, wrote this commentary that was first published in the Washington Post.