Using the football term “Georgia Flood the Zone” Georgia GOP leaders and UGA icons are pushing the hashtag #GAFloodTheZone to push turnout for Republican Senatorial candidate Herschel Walker. With early voting showing a brisk but typical Democrat leaning turnout, Republicans are hitting the alarm button to remind voters that pulling every possible voter to the polls is essential to edging out incumbent Raphael Warnock.
Walker has received a boost in his post General Election efforts from popular Governor Brian Kemp. Now two of Kemp’s most prominent supporters have doubled down of their support of Walker. Georgia’s first elected Republican U.S. Senator Mack Mattingly kicked off the “GAFloodTheZone” effort late Wednesday. The statewide patriarch of the Georgia GOP won his upset win against the longstanding Democrat Herman Talmadge (who later became a Mattingly friend) in 1980.
That was the same year the recently deceased UGA football legend, Coach Vince Dooley, captured a Bulldog National Championship. The coach’s wife, Barbara Dooley – a statewide household name – issued a similar “flood the zone” message in her first public statement since Coach Dooley’s passing. In a passionate plea she reminded voters that the late coach would “flood the (offensive) zone” to win a game. Mrs. Dooley is considered one of Herschel Walker’s closest supporters. She was a prominent Republican candidate for Congress in the early 2000s, even as her husband continued to describe himself as a traditional “conservative Democrat” who fully supported his wife and her campaign.
Coach Dooley later became a supporter of prominent Republicans, including Kemp, who has been a lifelong friend of the Dooley family.
Mattingly was elected at a time in Georgia history when no Republican had been elected statewide post-Reconstruction. His only Republican contemporary at the time was a then first term Representative Newt Gingrich. Gingrich went on to become Speaker of the House. InsiderAdvantage has learned that Gingrich plans to add his voice to the “GAFloodTheZone” effort in hopes to use social media to push GOP turnout up in the runoff.
As one Republican official told InsiderAdvantage, “it is no secret that the Democrats have mastered early voting in Georgia. What we have to do is admit that we start two touchdowns down and rally our voters to go the extra mile.”
