How Georgia turned away from reliably Republican
MARIETTA, GA. » It took a lifetime for Angie Jones to become a Democrat.
As a young woman, she was the proud daughter of a conservative family active in Republican politics. Ten years ago, after a friend’s son came out as gay, Jones became an independent, though one who watched Fox News. After the 2016 election, Jones, a stay- at- home mother in Johns Creek, a pristine wealthy suburb north of Atlanta, became frustrated with her conservative friends defending President Donald Trump through scandal after scandal.
And this year, she voted for Joe Biden after spending months phone- banking, canvassing and organizing for Democratic candidates with a group of suburban women across Atlanta.
“I feel like the Republican Party left me,” said Jones, 54. “It very much created an existential crisis for me.”
This past week, the political evolution of voters such as Jones drove Georgia to a breakthrough for Democrats: Biden, the presidentelect, was on the verge of adding the state to his winning electoral margin, with a narrow lead that is nevertheless a dramatic sign of the shifting politics of the South.
And two Democratic candidates, the Rev. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, forced runoff elections on Jan. 5 that should decide control of the Senate and the fate of much of Biden’s agenda. With the November election barely over, the nation’s political focus will now turn to Georgia as much as the presidential transition in Washington as both parties pour money and resources into what may be an epic political battle in a state that was considered safely Republican just a decade ago.
“It’s going to be hand to hand, street by street, and either one of them can win,” said former Gov. Roy Barnes, the most recent Democratic governor in the state.
The runoff contests will take place in a Georgia that bears little political resemblance to the state that voted out Barnes in 2002 after he engaged in a contentious effort to remove the Confederate battle emblem from the state flag.
The population surged to 10.6 million in 2019 from 7.9 million in 2000, and the foreign- born population now exceeds 10% of the state’s total. Atlanta has gone from corporate bland to youthful dynamic, with its indoor food markets, destination dining scene and rich entertainment culture, including a hiphop scene that drives trends worldwide. In 2004, 70% of voters were white, according to exit polls. This year, white voters made up 60%.
Until the 1970s, Georgia was virtually a one- party state, with conservative Democrats dominant. But as conservative voters moved en masse to the Republican Party, Democrats were left concentrated in places such as the city of Atlanta, adjacent and urbane Decatur, and smaller cities with significant AfricanAmerican populations.
In the last few years, however, some voters’ distaste for Trumpism has spread and demographic change has exploded, giving Democrats new strength in the vote- rich northern suburbs of Atlanta — such as Cobb and Gwinnett counties, which were once bastions of Republican power.
Hillary Clinton carried Cobb and Gwinnett even as she lost the state in 2016. This year, Biden won them again. And he added to her margin in the state, especially in the counties that are home to Georgia’s most important second- tier cities: Augusta, Columbus, Macon, Savannah and Athens.
In recent months, the pandemic has slowed the Georgia economy, with unemployment rising to 6.4% in September from 5.7% in August. COVID- 19 cases are increasing, too; over the past week, each day has averaged 2,242 new cases, an increase of 42% from the average two weeks earlier.
A new generation of Democratic candidates has left behind the fiscal and social conservatism of its forefathers to embrace a rising demographic coalition of Black voters, collegeeducated suburban women and a more politically engaged younger generation.
Even if Biden’s victory was ultimately delivered by northern industrial states such as Pennsylvania, his slim margin in Georgia points to the future of the Democratic Party, which could come into clearer view in the Senate runoffs.
Republicans will try to stop Democratic momentum, hoping that Biden’s strong performance here was more about Trump’s divisiveness than the GOP’s loosening grip on the dynamic South. For Democrats, winning both seats would leave the Senate at a 50- 50 split, with the vice president, Kamala Harris, the tiebreaker.
Even one Senate seat could prove that the demographic changes that Democrats have long predicted would favor them in swaths of the Sun Belt have finally arrived.
Despite the changes, the Republican Party here remains well- organized, powerful and popular, especially in rural and exurban communities.
“If we get a President- elect Biden — and I’m not saying we will — Democrats will be fat and happy, and Republicans will be scared and mobilized, and maybe even angry,” Brian Robinson, a Republican political strategist in Georgia, said before the call for Biden. “And they’re going to want to build a red wall in the Senate.”