Democrats: Georgia isn’t competitive in 2024 but maybe soon
Paul Begala, Forward Majority hope a $25-million voter registration effort will eventually turn the Peach State blue.
ATLANTA, Ga. (Atlanta News First) - Despite a federal court-ordered redistricting, Georgia won’t be competitive in 2024 for Democrats seeking to flip the state House and Senate.
But organizers of Forward Majority, a Democratic organization focused on state legislative power, said Monday they hope a new $25-million voter registration effort will make the Peach State more blue than red by 2028 or 2030.
“The Georgia House is one of our long-term projects; a Democratic majority isn’t within reach” in 2024, said Vicky Hausman, Forward Majority’s founder and co-CEO. Hausman added her organization’s works in Georgia’s suburban areas may make the state’s legislative elections more competitive by 2028 or 2030.
On Monday, Forward Majority announced its Battleground Voter Project, an effort to rebuild Democratic power in state legislatures. The Battleground Voter Project is part of a larger effort to win and defend Democratic majorities in state legislatures by 2030.
Hausman said her group has identified more than two million likely Democratic voters in Arizona, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Texas, Georgia and North Carolina, in suburban and exurban districts.
One of Forward Majority’s advisors is Paul Begala, former advisor to former President Bill Clinton. Begala was a chief strategist for the 1992 Clinton–Gore campaign, which carried 33 states and made Clinton the first Democrat to occupy the White House in 12 years.
Begala noted during former President Barack Obama’s administration, “we lost 948 legislative seats. A total of 29 chambers flipped. While Trump was president, we flipped six chambers; so far under Biden, we’ve flipped five chambers.
“We coming back, and if we do our job, we win. Democracy is on the edge of the cliff and Forward Majority has the rope.”
In less than a month, lawmakers will converge at the state capitol to redraw Georgia’s legislative and congressional voting maps, which U.S. District Judge Steven Jones has ruled in violation of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. His ruling also set a deadline of Dec. 8 for state lawmakers to draw new ones.
Gov. Brian Kemp has called a special legislative session to begin on Nov. 29.
Jones ordered lawmakers to draw two new Black-majority districts in the state Senate and five new Black-majority districts in the state House.
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