If last Tuesday’s election was more a Republican wave than a tsunami nationally, it sure as heck was the latter in Georgia. Both Republican U.S. Senate candidate David Perdue and Gov. Nathan Deal won convincingly, Democrat Congressman John Barrow of Augusta was handily vanquished (despite some onlookers saying he would survive as the last white Democrat in the Deep South) and down-ballot Republicans cruised to re-election. In the case of Richard Woods, the GOP state school superintendent nominee who many folks expected to get a strong run for his money won by the largest margin he’s ever posted in a campaign.
The Georgia Republican Party, too, made strides, investing in building an infrastructure for long-term field work and voter outreach. Save one profile by The Washington Post, much of it flew under the radar. Considerably more attention is being given to moves made by Georgia Democrats eager for revival.
Speaking of their bench, it now appears remarkably lacking. It is not so much that both Democrat Senate candidate Michelle Nunn and gubernatorial candidate Jason Carter lost, but the fact that they underperformed the expectations of many. A lot of people, myself included, speculated that Carter’s launching a 2014 bid for governor carried a secondary aim of leaving him the party’s de facto frontrunner for governor in 2018. Had he over-performed, or at least met expectations and still lost, it would have been one thing. Now, however, most would probably concede it is something else.
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