Few paths to electoral success have been smoother than Ben Watson’s.
In his career in the Georgia General Assembly, Watson has faced primary opposition only once, in 2010, when he won a Savannah-area seat in the state House of Representatives.
Fourteen years later, the four-term state senator and chairman of the powerful Health and Human Services Committee from the Isle of Hope again has a challenger from his own Republican Party.
It is Beth Majeroni, a hard-right conservative firebrand from Skidaway Island who has emerged from the ferment that has reshaped the local and state Republican Party since the 2020 presidential election to take him on in Tuesday’s primary election in her first ever bid for elected office.
The candidates for the District 1 seat represent two sides of that upheaval.
Watson is a rise-through-the-ranks, pay-your-dues member of the state’s Republican establishment — “I’m the one who establishes relationships with the governor, lieutenant governor and everyone, so we can get things done,” he said.
Majeroni, meanwhile, is a product of the GOP’s rebellious “grassroots,” which believes lawmakers like Watson are “non-conservative conservatives,” part of the “uniparty” of legislators, lobbyists and special interests in Atlanta that rule the state.
“I’m the conservative who stands up for what’s important to people in the community versus what’s important to special interests and lobbyists,” Majeroni said.
The stark differences between the two candidates over who is more authentically conservative and Republican have made the District 1 Senate race a bellwether election in Coastal Georgia, a battle-of-the-brands test of how deep into local Republican ranks the appeal of Majeroni’s far-right conservatism does — or doesn’t — go.
Changed political landscape
It was a group of mostly retired, well-to-do Republicans that gathered at The Landings on Skidaway Island in January for a fundraiser for Majeroni. In another year, another election cycle, it would be a Watson crowd.
But in 2024, not so much.
The local Republicans who crowded a clubhouse bar that evening — some already Majeroni supporters and others there to take her measure — are more restive and their worries more palpable than in previous election years, whether the issue is crime, education, elections, or immigration.
Those worries explain the push by Majeroni and other hard-right conservatives for a more uncompromising defense of what they see as the existential dangers facing “our way of life” in Georgia and the rest of the nation — a push that has shaken the foundations of the state GOP.
They also explain how Majeroni, was persuaded by Mallory Staples, head of the conservative Georgia Freedom Caucus, to take on Watson in the primary. Watson was viewed as out of step with District 1 voters and vulnerable to an upset from a more conservative candidate.
That January evening, the comments that drew the most enthusiastic response from Majeroni’s listeners that January evening weren’t examples of the “hail-fellow-well-met” conservatism of Ronald Reagan — though Reagan, she would later tell The Current, is one of her heroes.
Rather, her rhetoric and tone recalled a conservative Republican luminary from the even more distant past, Barry Goldwater, who famously said, “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.”
“Education has been replaced by indoctrination,” she said in her 12-minute speech, warning that ideas such as “a man can be a woman,” the Holocaust shouldn’t be discussed, and the government has the right to “tell us to wear a mask or go through a lockdown” were permeating American culture and threatening “our most malleable and vulnerable.”
‘Hero’ and ‘patriot’
Proclaiming Watson part of the “RINO Establishment at the Gold Dome,” the ultraconservative Georgia Republican Assembly has endorsed Majeroni, a 68-year-old retired pharmacy executive and reading specialist who lives at The Landings. That move places her squarely on one side of the intra-party fighting in the state GOP.
Conservative and right-wing media have championed Majeroni’s candidacy, too, after hailing her as a “hero” and a “patriot” in the days following a Chatham County Board of Elections meeting last July.
During the meeting, two Chatham County police officers forcibly removed Majeroni from the hearing room after she refused requests from the board’s chairman to relinquish the podium during the public-comment period.
“Beth Majeroni takes on the Great and Powerful Ben Watson OZ,” ran the headline of an interview with conservative talk show host John Fredericks. “Beth Majeroni to Ben Watson: It’s the People’s seat, not yours,” read another.
Caught off-guard
Unaccustomed to primary opposition, the 64-year-old Watson appeared to have been caught off-guard by Majeroni’s decision to primary him in District 1, an area that encompasses the counties of Liberty and Bryan, as well as parts of Chatham, including Savannah’s far south side and the islands of Skidaway, Wilmington, and Tybee.
More surprising, still, was that Majeroni herself delivered the news.
In what has become a staple story for Majeroni during the campaign — used to illustrate her portrait of Watson as a lawmaker whose incumbency has made him smug and out of touch with voters — she describes reaching Watson on the phone and telling him of her plans to throw her hat in the ring.
When silence followed, she interjected, “No harm, no foul.”
Well, there is harm, Watson replied after a long pause, according to Majeroni. You’re harming my family, he said.
Watson doesn’t dispute Majeroni’s account of the phone call, adding only that Majeroni’s “no-harm-no-foul” comment had been “very flippant.” He also explained that the “harm” he referred to during the call is the family disruption that is routine in the life of any elected official.
In an interview with The Current, Watson, a family practice physician, cited the Tybee Island-related “nuisance legislation,” as well as measures to improve school safety and elderly care, as his main legislative accomplishments during the latest session of the Georgia General Assembly.
Still, facing a primary challenge from an opponent more conservative than he, Watson appeared to leave little to chance during the session.
He led efforts in the Senate on hot-button issues dear to hardline conservatives, including a proposal to erect a statue to U.S. Supreme Justice Clarence Thomas and a ban on puberty-blocking drugs for transgender minors.
He also co-sponsored a bill that would have allowed anyone to be exempt from following a law or a governmental policy if they claim that the law or policy burdens their religious beliefs, as well as another measure that would have outlawed the American Library Association from Georgia’s public and school libraries.
Watson also rejected the notion that he had taken the session to focus on hot-button conservative issues that Majeroni might have used, failing that, to differentiate her more far-right brand of conservatism from his.
“I don’t think there’s anything that I have sponsored as a result of what she has said,” he said.
Most avid supporters
If early-voting trends persist, voter turnout on Tuesday will be light. That benefits, especially in a primary election, the candidate with the most avid supporters.
To rally his allies to the polls and stave off an upset, Watson is highlighting his endorsements from Gov. Brian Kemp and Lt. Gov. Burt Jones and the value to the district of his long tenure in the Senate.
In addition to his chairmanship of the Health and Human Services Committee, Watson has voting seats on the appropriations, administrative affairs, rules and judiciary panels, and is an ex-officio member of the Committee on Economic Development and Tourism.
On the strength of that resume, he’s seeking to frame the decision for voters as one about legislative competence and accomplishment, not a litmus over which candidate is the most authentic conservative.
That’s an argument that resonates with one of his longtime supporters.
Watson “knows how to work with people,” said Tommy Green, a friend of Watson’s for more than two decades.
“If you can’t get anything accomplished” it doesn’t matter if you’re far-right or center-right, said Green, 68, a retired pharmacist living in Richmond Hill, who described Watson as a “principled conservative.”
Watson said the ability to garner support in the legislature to advance the interests of the District 1 residents — is a talent his opponent lacks.
“I think she has demonstrated that she does not work well with others,” he said.
Majeroni, meanwhile, continues to portray the contest along more fraught, ideological lines in her campaign’s effort to mobilize disgruntled conservatives in Tuesday’s winner-take-all primary — no Democrat is contesting the seat in November.
“We have establishment Republicans versus the grassroots, America First Republicans,” she said. “We’re fighting to keep our country.”
Money could make a difference.
Owing mainly to contributions from health-care groups, Watson’s campaign committee has outraised Majeroni’s by a margin of more than 5-to-1 — $397,692.79 to $71,293.72 as of April 30, according to financial records filed to the Georgia Campaign Finance Commission.
In the campaign’s final weeks, Majeroni’s campaign was receiving help from an out-of-state conservative political action committee seeking to knock out incumbent GOP lawmakers across the country that it does not favor.
Since April 26, the Arlington, Va.-based Make Liberty Win, has spent more than $57,000 on digital ads and direct mail to boost her campaign and attack Watson’s, according to records filed to the state finance commission.
Make Liberty Win is a “dark money group,” so-called because it is not legally required to disclose its donors. The organization has been frequently linked to billionaire and conservative megadonor, Charles Koch.
It couldn’t be immediately determined from filings to the commission if there were dark money groups providing similar support to Watson’s campaign.
You must be logged in to post a comment.