The Path to the Governor’s Mansion or the Path to Irrelevance
This is good news for Democrats in metro Atlanta. We’re also seeing packed rooms at the County Democratic Party meetings. Ideally, this will all convert into a greater presence in 2018. But as of now, I’m not certain we’re setting ourselves up for anything better than what we did in 2016.
What worries me the most is that the message at the House Democratic Caucus town hall was the same messaging we’ve heard before. The elected Democrats have said that we succeeded in 2016, and that if we just mobilize we will sweep the statewide races in 2018 and 2020. Sorry to say, but this will not work.
The Georgia Democrats Did Not Succeed in 2016
First, let us rid ourselves of the idea that 2016 was a glaring success for the Georgia Democrats. It just wasn’t. Yes, we turned counties like Cobb blue. Yes, the state’s margin was closer than even Ohio. But that only focuses on the top of the ticket which was occupied by one of the worst GOP candidates to ever run. Yes, Trump won the Electoral College, but he still only pulled in about 46% of the total vote.
Once you take Trump out of the equation, the Georgia Democratic performance was pretty poor. We ran an unprepared, unsupported candidate best known for his horrendous hat for a Senate seat that should have been at least somewhat competitive.
We only flipped two seats in the State House while losing the most visible and competitive House race. The entire force of the party was behind Taylor Bennett’s campaign, and we still couldn’t make it happen. A tough district no doubt, but it was a failed test of a concentrated effort to elect a popular candidate.
Our state legislative races had little to no support while facing a significant fundraising disadvantage. We didn’t have enough candidates on the ballot to take a majority in either chamber. All this and I’m not even looking further down the ballot to the county commissioners and city council members.
By almost all accounts, the Georgia Democrats did not succeed in the 2016 election.
The Path to the Governor’s Mansion
I don’t always enjoy being the cynical one, but right now I have to at a minimum be the realist. The Georgia Democrats need to get some fire under them to actually make gains in the party. Not just gains in Atlanta, but gains across the state. We cannot rely solely on the negative reactions to a Trump presidency no matter how bad it gets before then.
Stacey Abrams made a comment at the town hall last Thursday. She said that we need to take the Governor’s Mansion in 2018 in order to veto the maps that come from the 2020 census. This was followed up later by a quote in the AJC:
We have to know that every year is an election year, and we are always campaigning. There are 160 municipal elections this year, and they are a chance to stand up and show who we are. That’s how Republicans took this state. They started with city council races, with soil and water conservation posts most of you skipped.
The article included more anecdotes of the fire that is starting to burn in the Democrats looking toward 2018. There are more people signing up to run, more people donating to progressive groups, and more people showing up for meetings. Abrams has started Georgia Resists as a way to push back against Trump. This site includes a section for people interested in volunteering and/or running for office.
I am excited that these things are happening, and while I agree with Abrams’ comments, I still worry that we fall into the same model that put us in this situation. Stacey Abrams’ tenure as Minority Leader has seen no gains in Democratic representation. Abrams became Minority Leader in 2011. After the 2010 election, the Democrats had 66 seats in the House and 20 seats in the Senate. We now have 62 seats in the House and 18 seats in the Senate. Abrams has been a powerful voice and brought attention to the State, but she has overseen six years that have reduced the Democrats to near Constitutional minorities in both chambers. It is true that taking the Governor’s Mansion would allow for a veto of the legislative maps, but a better strategy would be to focus on having enough representatives to draw the maps or at least provide some significant roadblocks. Her “relentless incrementalism” cannot be so incremental that we only pick up one House seat every cycle. That’s a path to relevance in another 50 years.
The town hall saw about 30 people sign up as interested to run, but I guarantee a significant number of these (if not all) will be in the metro area. If the only place Democrats run is the Atlanta metro, then we’ve already lost in 2018, 2020, and beyond. We have to realize that the state is larger than just metro Atlanta. It’s made up of a variety of locales and peoples. The Atlanta Democratic Party is not the same party that wins in rural Georgia.
Beyond this, getting more people to run for office is just the first step. There has been no fundraising support and no data support for more than just a few campaigns. I personally had candidates/staffers asking for my data breakdowns for their own races. That wouldn’t be necessary with an effective state party who has cultivated and supports its candidates. (This area is one that deserves and will get a more complete post.)
We cannot win statewide races without a statewide coalition of qualified and prepared candidates running in down-ballot races. We have to be a party that supports a diversity of thought, and that starts with people of a variety of viewpoints running across the state under the tent of the Democratic Party. If we don’t have Democratic candidates in a significant majority of down-ballot races, then we’ve already lost. (I also believe we need a healthy primary to allow the Democrats across the state to define what the Georgia Democrats believe, but this again is probably a topic for another time.)
The path to the Governor’s Mansion is not contained only within the gubernatorial candidates and their campaigns. The path to the Governor’s Mansion goes throughout the state from the bottom of the ballot up to the top.
We have to believe that the Georgia Democrats can succeed, but continuing to “succeed” in the model of 2016 is not a long-term model for the party. That model is not a path to the Governor’s Mansion.
It’s a path to continued irrelevance.
Originally published on the Politics for Tomorrow blog. Part of PeachPod.
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