James September-October 2024 web - Flipbook - Page 53
IT’S NOT A MATTER of if, it’s a
matter of when and how. Georgia will,
at some point in the future, become a
state governed by Democrats.
Before every Young Republican and
GOP State Convention delegate starts
labeling me a socialist, remember
I was a Republican state
legislator and the 1990 GOP
nominee for lieutenant governor long before Republicans could elect statewide
officials or control the legislature. I’m writing this as
a pollster who, before moving
to Florida, polled for and appeared on
TV election nights for WXIA, later WSB
and finally Fox5 Atlanta.
It is probably fair to say that InsiderAdvantage has polled Georgia more
than any other polling unit in history.
Landmark Communications, for which
I have great respect, would be a close
second. Knowing the state’s demographics and voting trends has been
my business for years.
Yes, Georgia will take a turn. Here
is why and how it will likely go down.
Atlanta’s Electorate Evolution
First and foremost, Atlanta and
its metro area has always been what
winds the watch in Georgia. After
the 1996 Olympics it has exploded in
terms of population and diversity. That
Olympics served as the all-time high
watermark for the city. The entire world
saw metro Atlanta as a clean, bright,
vibrant and happy symbol of the best
of modern America. Then the world
decided to descend on Atlanta. Not just
to visit, but to make it its home.
Just years later, the devastating
Hurricane Katrina wiped out New Orleans, and many of that city’s residents
came to Atlanta thinking they would
just visit. Most of them never went
back to “the Big Easy.”
By the mid-2000s Atlanta had become a mecca for
African-American musicians and entertainers.
And within years the
rest of the entertainment
world— film and TV
production— realized that
Georgia’s tremendous tax advantages for their industry, as well as the
state’s ability to provide any location
such as mountains or beaches or big
cities, made it a perfect location to set
up shop.
Meanwhile, there was phenomenal growth in metro Atlanta’s
affluent African-American
middle class. Talented
and industrious immigrants from West Africa,
Asia, Caribbean islands,
Mexico and Central America
added hundreds of thousands
of new residents.
Once sleepy and mostly
white bedroom community cities like
Smyrna, Douglasville and Fayetteville
slowly saw their areas grow and become much more diverse.
At the same time, more and more
corporations and financial institutions
decided that Atlanta was the place to
be. As the money from other parts of
the nation started to flow in, so too did
the political beliefs from those far-flung
locations. With the blink of an eye
metro Atlanta counties such as Cobb,
Gwinnett, Douglas and Henry counties
went from forming a red Republican
“doughnut” around Atlanta, to joining
Fulton and DeKalb as reliable blue
Democrat locations on the political
map. The combination of an AfricanAmerican vote that generally favors
Democrats, along with a wealthy metro
Atlanta white voter profile of a Northeastern or California political mentality,
created an increasingly difficult challenge for Republicans.
One Republican who understood
this shift was Gov. Brian Kemp. After
beginning his first term in 2019 he
sought diversity in the endless appointments to boards, agencies and judicial
posts granted a Georgia governor. His
tussles with former President Donald
Trump made him more popular with
the new white suburban transplants.
And while he took a hit with the 40
percent of Trump loyalists during his
re-election bid, it wasn’t one
that kept him from being
renominated and re-elected. His approach and style
blunted any effort made
by Democrat Stacey Abrams in
their 2022 rematch— one which
Abrams made with less excitement or
effort as opposed to her original 2018
campaign against Kemp.
But could Kemp be the state’s last
Republican governor? Two Republican
U.S. Senate seats were narrowly lost
in 2020 statewide runoffs. The Senate
seat which came up first for a fullterm election was won by Democrat
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