A Tale of Two GOP Minority Outreach Strategies
In recent elections, Henry County has become yet another metro-Atlanta county to gain battleground status. Indeed, Mitt Romney won Henry in 2012 with only a 3,000 margin out of over 91,000 cast, down from a 6,500 vote margin for John McCain in 2008.
Despite this shift in electoral math that will undoubtedly effect the margin Donald Trump may or may not have in Georgia come Election Day, Trump’s Henry County Co-Chair seems to believe that minority outreach is a waste of time.
As Jessica linked to in the Morning Reads, USA Today has an article up yesterday that spells out the hopes of Georgia Democrats in becoming competitive during the current general election cycle. Here’s former State Senator Jason Carter responding to questions about the viability of the Clinton campaign in Georgia:
“I think it’s clearly a battleground state,” says Jason Carter, grandson of the former president and the 2014 Democratic gubernatorial nominee. “I think that we are undeniably in play today.”
Responding to Carter’s assertion, current GAGOP 1st Vice Chair Michael McNeely (who has announced he will be seeking a promotion to Chairman at next year’s convention) rejects the notion that Georgia is in play.
“We’re not a battleground state,” says Michael McNeely, first vice chair of the state Republican Party. “We’re a very conservative, red state, and we will continue to be so.”
The article goes on to highlight the GAGOP’s bullish view on Donald Trump’s chances at not only winning Georgia, but indeed winning a historic 20% of the African American vote. The state party’s Director of Minority Engagement, Leo Smith, told USA Today that the party would be planning “more editorials from minority surrogates,” and “additional advertising on black radio stations and publications.” This answer was preceded by a curious rationale for voters unsure whether to vote for Clinton or Trump:
“Is the devil that has already proven to be the devil the one you want to choose, or do you want to choose possibilities?” he said. Clinton, he says, “is the mistress of oppression, she is the system itself.”
Enter Donald Trump’s Henry County Co-Chair, Kimberley Dial. Her response to a question about Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric towards minorities and minority outreach in general went something like this:
“They weren’t voting Republican anyway,” she says. “They want free, and that’s why they’re Democrats. And so he wasn’t going to get their vote even if he didn’t offend them.”
Contrast that response on diversity within the Republican Party with comments at a UGA College Republican event last night that Jon live tweeted and summarized in a Facebook post. At the meeting, Georgia House Speaker David Ralston asked the college students attending to not give up on the GOP. After discussing several policy proposals coming before the General Assembly next legislative session, Ralston urged the GOP to not become the party of ‘old, angry, straight, white guys.’ He went on to say that new people coming into the party can be achieved by having a positive, solution-focused vision for the future. Ralston assured the attendees that the politics of personal destruction that many feel has become commonplace in the current election cycle was not what our state or the nation is all about.
If the GAGOP, the Trump campaign, and the other Republicans across the state want to expand the GOP and welcome in new voices, new perspectives, and new voters, it seems pretty clear to me which approach is desperately needed and which is doomed to fail.
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Cody
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‘old, angry, straight, white guys.’
Hey, they’re not all old. It’s worth visiting Jon’s facebook page to watch Charlie Harper and Josh McKoon trade jabs.
It’s a glaring contrast between fiscally conservative, socially liberal voters that desperately want the Republican party to field a progressive candidate, and not necessarily fiscally conservative, socially conservative voters that are ruining the Republican party.
Easiest bet in the world on which county in Georgia flips this fall is Henry. Not only did the margin drop from Bush +21,663 in ’04 to McCain + 6,588 to Romney +2,925 (Romney dropping the margin even as the GOP margin statewide went up by 100,000 votes) but Carter and Nunn both won the county in 2014 (Gov: 49.3-48.6, Sen: 49.4-48.8) even though hey lost the state by a bit worse than Obama. What I’m curious about is Cobb and Gwinnett: Two former GOP vote engines whose margins have been shrinking the last two cycles, with four more years of demographic churn and plenty of the kind of educated, rich suburb where Trump is struggling nationwide. I’m legit curious that the GOP might lose one of them for the first time since the first Carter campaign, even though the exurbs/rural vote will keep them winning the state.
By the way, if you want some fun, one of the national election data people created a spreadsheet with how every county in the country has voted since 1836:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ZmDRzvm83BYurKX7LsrET-C7tcIsE5Em42Wt-gTydXk/edit#gid=567595745
Some interesting Georgia facts I didn’t know:
In 1972 Richard Nixon won all 159 counties in the state, and in the next election Jimmy Carter won all 159 counties in the state. Going down all 50 states, the only other times that ever happened were in Delaware, which has all of three counties, and Hawaii and Rhode Island, with all of five. Even in your big shifts (from Hoover winning by 17 points to FDR winning by 17 points, or the South going from D to R with Civil Rights Acts) didn’t mean there weren’t a few counties that went one way or the other in the other states. Even if it was only a county or two, some places backed both Al Smith and FDR, or still believed in Herbert Hoover.
Richmond (Augusta) abandoned the Dems earlier than the rest of the state, backing Thurmond, Ike, Nixon, and Goldwater, but also went Dem as the rest of the state got redder, voting for Clinton, Gore, Kerry and Obama.
Chatham (Savannah) went GOP earlier than the rest of the state too, backing Ike, Nixon ’60, and Goldwater, only to turn around and back Humphrey ’68 instead of Wallace or Nixon, and then did slid the other way again later, becoming the only county in the state that went from Red to Blue in 2004, having stayed that way since.