Tag Archives: georgia

State Sen. Nikema Williams (SD-39) to Rep. Nikema Williams (GA-05)

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The die has been cast: Senator Nikema Williams will now become the first woman ever nominated as a Democrat to the 5th congressional district of Georgia. This means a seat has been opened in SD39.

Nikema has worked her way up as an activist, from her earlier campus activism with Young Democrats of Georgia as National Committeewoman and Political Director in the 2000s to her work at Planned Parenthood Southeast. She served as Chair of the 13th Congressional District from 2007-2011, the youngest congressional chair ever elected in the DPG’s modern history at the time. She served as the DPG’s First Vice Chair from 2011-2019, stepping in temporarily as interim chair in 2013 upon the resignation of Mike Berlon. She then stepped into the electoral arena with her run for Vincent Fort’s seat in 2017, and then became the first Black woman Chair of the DPG in 2019.

Nikema, as the presumptive winner of the 5th district election, will also be the baby of the Georgia delegation at 41yo. For as long as no primary challenge is whipped up in the coming years, she has plenty of time to grow into the role.

I wonder how many YDG alums have become members of Congress, or have become officeholders at any level. We should be building more more Nikemas and other Democrats who are groomed and trained to run for moments like this. We need a well-oiled political machine.

Georgia Primary Advisory Questions and Results

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Working on a list of ballot questions which were placed on county primary ballots on June 9. I’m looking for the other questions placed on the ballot in 10 remaining counties.

There were 19 counties which had county-level party primary advisory questions on June 9, out which 7 had Democratic entries.

Forsyth by far had the most Democratic advisory questions with 11 questions. Cobb came in second with 6 questions, followed by Oconee and Walton which had 5 each, Dawson with 4, Glynn with 3 and Upson with 2. Clayton and Harris also had the most Republican questions with 8 each; Hart with 7; Barrow, Columbia and Rabun with 5; Forsyth and Glynn with 4; Brantley, Gordon, Henry and Jackson with 3; Union with 2; and Lincoln with 1.

Republicans had at least 6 counties where “2nd Amendment sanctuary county” questions were placed on the primary ballot. A few counties had Republican ballots replete with anti-immigrant language, including anti-sanctuary city, pro-border wall, anti-immigrant-student, anti-driver’s-license-for-immigrants, and so on.

Democrats had their own red-meat questions, ranging from climate change, pre-k education, Medicaid expansion, election reform and immigration reform.

A notable question was one asking Henry County Republicans on whether to legalize marijuana, which was supported at 51%. At least two counties asked Republicans on whether to legalize casino/horse/sports gambling, neither of which were affirmed.

Another notable exception was in Forsyth County, where one party question ended up on both primary ballots: “Should the County invest in beautification projects such as median landscaping, mast arms for stop lights, and upgraded signage similar to John’s Creek, Alpharetta, Roswell and Sugar Hill?” It was supported on both ballots.

A few may have legislative impact at the county level, with Cobb’s Democratic question 11 asking for a county non-discrimination ordinance (in lieu of Georgia’s lack of a civil rights law) being supported 97.41%.

After Mark Jones’ Victory, the Bigger Work Ahead

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This is part of why I did whatever I did with Mark’s campaign.

This year, we blew the judicial and DA elections, badly. 4 Supreme Court justices, 6 Court of Appeals judges, 138 Superior Court judges across 49 circuits, all nonpartisan.

Out of those 138 Superior Court seats, only 14 received challengers, across 9 circuits.

Out of the 35 District Attorney races up for election, 6 will have major party candidates go up against each other in November (in Alcovy, Augusta, Dublin, Eastern, Gwinnett and Houston). Dems decided 7 DA races by default in the primary, and the GOP decided 22 other races by default. All DA races are partisan.

So the next chance we get to make an impact on these judicial and DA elections should be seriously capitalized upon.

In 2022, 1 Supreme Court Justice, 2 Court of Appeals judges, 74 Superior Court judges in 36 circuits, 44 State Court judges in 30 counties, 17 chief magistrate judges, and district attorneys in 10 circuits will be up for election. Most of these hardly ever get challengers, and that needs to be changed.

We can’t say that we are pro-CJ reform but not get involved in pro-reform electoral bids for judicial and prosecutorial seats.

So I’m writing forum questions to ask judgeship candidates for 2022.

Stacey Abrams is Right to Stay Away from the Senate Race

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Pundits on Twitter are still pissed that Stacey Abrams abstained from a Senate run.

It’s not her fault that all our candidates for Senate suck at fundraising, or that idiot Democrat donors from out of state are burning their money on the twin pyres of McGrath (KY) and Harrison (SC).

Her eyes have been set on the governorship and nothing else. If she ran for Senate (or even House) in 2020, she would be trashed as an also-ran chasing any office like Beto was.

I also don’t think she should be a VP pick. What would be the benefit? She would be distracted from her political plans, and whoever wins the nomination would be attacked for picking a state legislator without federal experience.

The candidates who qualified for Perdue’s Senate last week just need to step their game up and/or clear the field ASAP. It’s getting a bit late in the day, and state’s out west and in NC are deciding their Senate nominees real soon. Similarly, these Dems running for Loeffler’s seat in the jungle primary need to get their shit together to avoid a lockout from a likely runoff.

Also, as an aside, I don’t care much for Maya Dillard Smith because she’s transphobic AF. Accomplished, but not on my shortlist.

Post-Reconstruction White Republicans in the South

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Fannin, Pickens, Gilmer and Towns counties in Appalachian Georgia are Deep-red counties which I can respect. They’ve consistently voted for Republicans since the 1870s, and their ancestors, like East Tennesseeans, were more sympathetic to the Union. Fannin, in particular, was the ONLY county in the entire Deep South and West South Central states to not vote for FDR, only voting for Democrats William Jennings Bryan (1900) and Jimmy Carter (1976) since 1868.

Similarly, East Tennessee – the most mountainous and least plantation-friendly region of the state – contained the most solidly-Republican congressional districts – CD-01 and CD-02 – in the ex-Confederate South. They have always elected Republican representatives – and never elected a Democrat – to Congress since 1870. They also had a history of seeking separation from Tennessee over the issue of Confederate secession.

They are literally the only counties whose white people can say “I’m a Republican because my great-great-great-great grandpapa voted Republican, none of them were slaveowners, the Confederate bastards killed my 3rd cousin x-times removed for desertion or draft resistance, and we resisted their children’s kleptocratic Dixiecrat rule by holding the only Republican primaries in the whole state”.

They were likely racist, too (of course!), but perhaps not to the extent that the Dixiecrats in plantation-land were. Maybe they didn’t feel so much of an impulse that poor white people should vote with the rich white people for the same party to preserve the Deep South’s pecking order.

So they were OG Southern Republicans – Appalachian folk who resisted outside governance and monied aristocrats alike – who voted that way loooooong before the Second Reconstruction made the Democratic brand less popular among the Dixiecrats’ descendants and made it hip to vote GOP.

My Hot Take: Split Georgia in Half

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I’m going to be heartless like a liberal Ann Coulter (or more like Michael Tomasky?) in this post, so prepare to yikes:

I’m not going to blame black voters for this, be they rural or urban.

I’m going to blame white rural voters in Georgia, especially in rural South Georgia. They will never change their vote, not even for a conservative white “good-ole-boy” Democrat has-been who “won’t bite” like John Barrow.

I’m tired of this state. Split Georgia in half. Pull a “3 Californias” on it.

South Georgia is still outvoting Metro Atlanta statewide, no matter who we will put out there in 2020 or 2022 for Senate or any executive position. Stacey Abrams, if she runs for U.S. Senate, won’t replace David Perdue with this map.

Meanwhile, this is the map of active and inactive Democratic county committees, and a map of how Georgia voted in the gubernatorial.

(Where are the county committees for Talbot, Stewart, Macon? They voted in the majority for Stacey Abrams, but there are no Democratic committees there.)

As far as looking at counties is concerned, I still don’t see the benefit of the “organize-organize-organize” strategy. People are voting the way they’re voting whether or not we are organizationally present. How many more votes can we squeeze out of Democratic voters that don’t fall victim to the next scummy Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger? South Georgians aren’t stupid and are voting for their culture and their beliefs, just like they always have (even when they prevented black people from voting). They’re voting so deeply red for a reason, making the rest of the state look like a joke, and that can’t be ignored or glossed over by assuming that they are stupid.

Republicans are adept at picking their voters (and justifying it, too!), just like their conservative Democratic parents were. I’m open to doing the same thing. Let’s pick our residents. Let’s cut off South Georgia, south of Augusta-Macon-Columbus, into its own state so that they won’t rule the rest of us with their messed-up choices anymore.

I want to win something at least one goddamn election. I want my values to at least be marginally represented in the governor’s mansion at least once every 100 years. We are too large, we have too many counties, and we are still paying the price for the Union not breaking up some Confederate states.

South Georgia ruled the rest of Georgia during the years of the County-Unit System, during the height of Jim Crow apartheid. Brian Kemp ignored urban and suburban Georgia and pulled the votes of rural white South Georgia. Almost all of his mandate comes from South Georgia. I want to bid them adieu so that we can go our own separate ways, so that my political values are more competitive in statewide elections. #2Georgias #BreakItUp

Georgia Democrats Are Useless Right Now

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At the rate we’re going, Democrats will always be in the minority in GA.

  • We will always be fighting the predominant party from an inferior position.
  • We will never win the majority of either house of the General Assembly.
  • We will be eternally held hostage by right-wing bigot legislators.
  • We’ll never field competent competition in “deep red districts”.
  • We’ll never reform the State Constitution.
  • We’ll never get public accommodations-related civil rights passed.
  • We’ll forever stay a red welfare state.
  • We’ll let “religious” business owners turn away all possible demographics as customers, employees, associates because of things they can’t change.
  • We’ll recriminalize abortion.
  • We’ll erase separation of religion and state.
  • We’ll further erase separation of corporation and state.

But stay in your “safe seats”, Georgia Democrats, and ignore rural seats at your peril.

Know your place, Georgia Democrats. Be useless.

More-Connected Southern Cities

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Atlanta has a lot in common with the “coastal elite”. So do Charlotte, and New Orleans, and Nashville, and Birmingham, and the big four metro areas of East Texas. Even Jackson, Mississippi is a small pocket of liberal politics.

But many of these cities are also well-connected to interstate highways, international airports and/or mass transit systems. They’re connected in ways that smaller cities like Columbus, Macon, Corpus Cristi, Huntsville, Mobile, Pensacola, Charleston, and Little Rock are not.

One thing that is on my wishlist for Georgia is an interstate highway that goes through Columbus to Macon to Augusta, so that Macon will be almost as well-connected to second-tier cities as Atlanta. It would also benefit third-tier cities like Milledgeville, Sandersville and Roberta.

The second issue I hope to see resolved is the dearth of under-100k cities in the area between Augusta, Macon, Albany, Valdosta and Savannah. Tifton and Valdosta only have 1 interstate running through their cities, and on either side there is a multitude of very small towns until you get to Savannah or the Alabama border (with the exception of Albany). I think Tifton or Valdosta are a good place to have another East-West interstate, running from Savannah through either of these cities to a major city in either Alabama or Florida. It would be good for the farming communities of southern Georgia and southern Alabama.