“Democrats have major egg on their face,” InsiderAdvantage is told by a prominent bipartisan political consultant, for losing a state Senate seat that is 60 percent black and that voted over 70 percent for Barack Obama in 2012 and for Democrat U.S. Senate candidate Michelle Nunn last fall. The reference is to Senate District 43, which covers sections of Rockdale, Newton and DeKalb counties, which was narrowly won by Republican JaNice Van Ness.
Van Ness, a former Rockdale County commissioner, won by 87 votes with 3,864, or 50.57 percent of the ballots cast, while Democrat Tonya Anderson had 3,777 votes, or 49.43 percent. (All the absentee ballots have been counted.)
Inevitably, Democrats will point to Democrat Taylor Bennett’s recent win in state House District 80 as a surprise (the seat once held by Republican Mike Jacobs) but that Brookhaven-based district is far less Republican than Senate District 43 is Democrat. For instance, now U.S. Sen. David Perdue won just 52 percent in HD 80 last year— hardly the stuff of landslides— while Nunn took 71 percent in SD 43.
According to our research, Georgia has never had a district this heavily black represented by a Republican (certainly at least not in last 25 to 30 years). It would be the political equivalent (a shocker!) of a Democrat winning a state House seat in East Cobb, North Fulton or Columbia County for that matter.
“You would think heads would roll at state Democratic party headquarters over this one,” our bipartisan consultant source says. “It shows the Republicans effectively identified their voters and got them out to vote. Perhaps over 80 percent of all the Republicans in that district faithfully trooped to the polls.”
