For much of the past 20 years, Senate District 48, which spans parts of Duluth and Johns Creek in the North Atlanta suburbs, was a Republican stronghold.
David Shafer, now Chairman of the Georgia Republican Party, first won the seat in 2002, and ran unopposed in every cycle until giving it up to run for Lt. Governor in 2018. A powerful voice in the state Senate, Shafer cut an imposing figure over a district that Republicans figured would be safely red heading into the 2020’s.
But 2018’s blue wave that washed over metro Atlanta’s northern suburbs caught SD 48 in its riptide, as Democrat Zahra Karinshak, an attorney and former Air Force officer, won her party’s primary and then the general election by some 6%, nearly 5,000 votes over Republican Matt Reeves. After serving just one year in the Senate, however, Karinshak declared her candidacy for Georgia’s 7th Congressional District, set to be vacated by incumbent Republican Rep. Rob Woodall.
That race figures to feature hotly contested primaries on both sides, with Karinshak seeking to knock off Carolyn Bourdeaux, who very nearly defeated Woodall in 2018.
Regardless of that result, however, her entrance into the race re-opens SD 48 after just two years of Democratic representation, and gives the GOP a chance to regain the suburban seat that they held for so long.
Matt Reeves, 2018’s Republican candidate, became the first to announce for the seat this week. The Duluth attorney scored more than 30,000 votes in 2018, and hopes to build on that number to retake a seat that will assuredly be targeted by both parties as a winnable race.
Said Reeves in his campaign announcement, “First, I want to thank the over 30,000 citizens who voted for me last cycle, and I will continue to keep reaching out to voters who didn’t. If you want a bipartisan problem-solver focused on health care, our schools, keeping our community safe, and fiscal conservatism, then I’m your candidate. I care deeply about our families, homeowners, working people, and small businesses and will fight hard in the State Senate for our values and quality of life, working with our local elected officials. We are going to work hard to raise money and bring our message to all the voters in District 48 in 2020.”
No Democrats have yet announced for the seat, but expect to see some names pop up sooner rather than later in a district that the party feels it should be able to keep in a presidential election year.
