Stacey Abrams, Jon Ossoff, Lucy McBath, Raphael Warnock, and the bittersweet Revival of the Georgia Democrats
Win or lose in 2022, Stacey Abrams has already made history
If even Barack Obama couldn’t win Georgia in 2008, nobody could.
Or so they thought.
Georgia had long been a sore spot for Democrats in the south. President Obama had flipped Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida in 2008. He held on to Virginia and Florida in 2012, and Hillary Clinton also carried Virginia in her run for president in 2016. Democrats had even won Senate races in southern states like Louisiana and Arkansas. But Georgia just never seemed to go their way. As they said, if even Barack Obama couldn’t win Georgia, nobody could.
Then came the turning point.
Georgia’s sixth congressional district is where our story begins. The district, situated in the North Atlanta suburbs, had long been a Republican stronghold. Not long ago, the Atlanta suburbs were almost entirely populated by wealthy white Georgians. Even after segregation ended in the 1960s, it was still extremely difficult for Black Americans to purchase land in formerly segregated areas. In the 1980s, an investigation into the Atlanta real estate market proved that banks were much more likely to provide loans to white families than to nonwhite ones. Redlining and the housing bubble made it nearly impossible for people of color to buy higher-quality land that was often present in the affluent Atlanta suburbs, and as a result, districts like Georgia’s sixth were predominately white for a very long time. Demographics like these made areas like suburban Atlanta perfect for Republicans. Affluent, white college-educated voters were a major voting bloc for the GOP throughout the 90s and 2000s. Wealthy majority-white areas were what handed George Bush the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections, and they were what gave Republicans their House majorities from 1995-2007 and 2011-2019. Georgia’s sixth has been an iconic part of Republican successes over the past 30 years. Not only did Newt Gingrich hold this seat when he was Speaker, but Johnny Isakson (Rest in peace) and Tom Price also represented the district. Even in the blue waves of 2006 and 2008, Price won reelection by more than 35% both times. In years as recent as 2016, Republicans were carrying the sixth district by more than 20 points.
Things have changed, though. Five of Georgia’s six main suburban Atlanta counties are now majority-nonwhite, and college-educated voters are now leaning towards Democrats, not Republicans. Georgia’s sixth district was won by Donald Trump by single digits in 2016, marking the first time in over 20 years that the seat was competitive at any level. In June of 2017, there was a special election in the district to fill the vacancy that had been opened by Tom Price’s resignation (he was to become the next Secretary of Health and Human Services). Jon Ossoff (you can forget about that guy, it’s not like he’s going to win the most critical senate race of 2020) was the Democratic nominee. Ossoff was unique because he was another candidate ready to shatter the glass ceiling - he was a 30-year-old Jewish documentary producer who was running in the most expensive House race in Georgia history.
Despite the hype around Ossoff’s candidacy, the night ended poorly for Democrats. Ossoff didn’t do better than Clinton, and he lost the race by nearly four percent. Ossoff’s loss was a sad reflection of the Democrats in 2017, and it was yet another disappointing performance for a party that hadn’t had a good election since 2012.
But then the tables turned in Georgia. Momentum shifted. The Democrats were gearing up for a wave year in 2018, and they were hoping to flip the House. Georgia’s sixth district was a seat Dems had been eyeing for a year. It would have been incredible for them if they could flip the seat once held by Newt Gingrich. Polling data showed it was possible, and with the seat on its way to becoming one of the most diverse in the country, opportunity was knocking. The only thing left for the Democrats was to find a good candidate to run, and without Jon Ossoff, they turned to Lucy McBath.
McBath’s story is nothing short of incredible. She lost her 17-year-old son to gun violence in 2012 and became an advocate for more restrictions on assault rifles. Her run for Congress in 2018 was inspirational, and despite all the obstacles, she beat incumbent Republican Karen Handel in a seat that hadn’t voted Democratic since 1976.
On the same night, Stacey Abrams’s campaign watched the election results in the state closely. Abrams was yet another historic candidate. She was the first person of color to be a major political party’s nominee for governor in the state, and, if she had won, she would’ve been Georgia’s first female governor. Abrams lost, but her performance was still impressive. She made it the closest Georgian gubernatorial election in over 40 years, and she outran Hillary Clinton nearly everywhere, helping further cement Democratic optimism about Georgia’s potential to turn blue in the future.
Then, it happened. Georgia went blue.
Georgia’s newfound progressiveness is something that is undeniably impressive and fascinating, and it can be tied to the robust foundation Stacey Abrams built with her 2018 gubernatorial campaign. Biden did a great job on his own in Georgia, but I have a hard time believing that Biden would have still won if Stacey Abrams was not on the ballot as the Democratic nominee for governor in 2018. Abrams built a winning foundation for Georgia Democrats when she ran for governor, and her ability to turn out new voters for them in 2020 proved that Democrats can win in places like Georgia if they run the right campaigns.
The victories started to pile up for Georgia Democrats. Biden’s win in Georgia gave Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff (remember him?) the confidence to run winning senate campaigns that handed Democrats the Senate in January of 2021. The best part of the Georgia runoffs last year, though, was the fact that Raphael Warnock, a Black pastor from Atlanta, won despite an archaic runoff system designed to prevent people like him from winning elections in the south. The first-ever Black senator in the history of Georgia bested a system designed to stop Black voters from having a say in elections, and that is American democracy at its finest. Our republic is far from perfect, but when we the people utilize it for good, change occurs, leaders are held accountable, and most importantly, history is made. Injustice in Georgia is alive and well, but there’s a light at the end of the tunnel that shines brighter than the ugly darkness that once eclipsed it.
This man UEP just popped off
But in 2022 the GOP is well poised to take senator Rafael warnocks senate seat with the election of Hershel Walker