Story by KATY MAYFIELD – Staff Writer
Video by NICHOLAS BYRNE – Broadcast Managing Editor
Last November, in the throes of what many political TV pundits now call “Democalypse 2014”, dozens of Democratic Governors, Senators and Representatives were beaten by their Republican opponents, giving Republicans the majority in both the House and Senate. To be fair, it is a Democratic President’s second term, so this sort of thing isn’t unusual. In compliance with the “Democalypse”, Democratic candidates for Senate and Governor, Michelle Nunn and Jason Carter, lost to their Republican opponents.
However, just because certain patterns normally appear in voting trends doesn’t mean that election results are set in stone. Considering the polarizing attitudes many have toward the South’s supposedly extremely conservative political orientation, neither Nunn nor Carter should have had a prayer. Yet they did. Both candidates ran well-funded, well-publicized campaigns and lost by fewer than ten points.
Carter specifically lost to Deal by only eight points; 53-45. I attended a fundraiser for Carter at Athens’ Grindhouse Killer Burgers and the atmosphere wasn’t one of cows to an electoral slaughter.
Granted, the people I spoke to were bona fide Carter supporters. However, many of them also once held political office or specialized in law or political science. They knew their stuff, and decided to follow someone who knew his.
Carter, a lawyer and state Senator (and grandson of former President Jimmy Carter), has years of experience at the law firm Bondurant, Mixson and Elmore, LLP, where he most notably challenged restrictive Voter ID laws (for which he won the Stuart Eizenstat Young Lawyer Award from the Anti-Defamation League). In addition, Carter spent years working on education in South Africa through the Peace Corps and still sits on the boards of several charities and public interest organizations, including the DeKalb Women’s Resource Center to End Domestic Violence and Hands on Atlanta, an outlet for community service.
Deal, on the other hand, has been involved in an ongoing ethics controversy involving multiple cover ups of campaign finances.
Basically, this election had a ninth-generation Georgian and grandson of a President up against a governor with ethics issues.
And yet Democrats, the party which already has trouble mobilizing voters, still stayed at home on Voting Day, assuming that their party would never have a shot in our “solid red” state. What they don’t consider is that Democrats’ low voter efficacy is as big of an issue for Georgian Democrats as the Republican majority is. According to the Atlanta Journal Constitution and New York Times, Georgia’s demographics are changing significantly, and with them, so is our political culture. Minorities tend to vote heavily democratic, and as a result, Georgia’s growing minority populations should signal a less Republican-leaning state.
Yet though Georgian democratic candidates’ futures are bright and victory in the governor’s or senators’ offices is becoming a realistic possibility, our past almost-extremism is still influencing voters. It’s still prevalent simply because it’s been prevalent. As a result, Democrats don’t vote, fearing the dreaded Wasted Vote syndrome that usually only happens to minor parties.
Finally, nothing shows an election’s true colors like the numbers. According to The Red and Black, Athens Clarke County, arguably the most Democratic county in Georgia, had a voter turnout in the midterm at 46.05%, whereas the overall state turnout for Georgia was 50.4%. Democratic candidates count on blue counties like Clarke to come out in swarms in order to stand a chance. However, Clarke County didn’t turn out this election, causing a sizable portion of the Democratic vote to be lost.
People often told me matter-of-factly after the election that I shouldn’t have gotten my hopes up because no Democrat could ever win in a state as red as Georgia.
Maybe if they stopped thinking that way, one could.
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