At a Chatham County fundraiser two years ago, 1st District U.S. Rep. Earl “Buddy” Carter cautioned any candidate for elected office against the dangers of complacency and taking the support of voters for granted. “As I always say, there’s only two ways to run: unopposed or scared. I’m gonna be runnin’ scared.”
In his bid for a fifth term in Congress, Carter isn’t running unopposed — Richmond Hill Democrat Patti Hewitt is standing against him for Coastal Georgia’s seat in Congress. Still, he has shown no signs of “running scared.” There’s been little evidence of him running at all.
Carter has declined at least two invitations to debate Hewitt. At a “meet-the-candidates” segment hosted by WTOC-TV last week, he didn’t appear on the same studio set with his Democratic opponent.
During his eight-minute interview with WTOC reporter Madeline Hunt, the former Pooler mayor repeated the talking points he has delivered in numerous television appearances during the past two years, criticizing the Biden administration’s handling of inflation and its “war” on fossil fuels, and describing the economy four years ago under Donald Trump as “humming.”
Carter didn’t mention Hewitt’s name or acknowledge that he was running for reelection. Nor did he perform that election-season ritual of every candidate: asking constituents for their votes. In other words, in this and other public appearances in recent months, there has been no evidence — his political admonition two years ago aside — that he is “running scared” for reelection.
Carter’s office didn’t respond to requests from The Current for an interview to discuss his campaign.
Advantages
In Carter’s latest election campaign — he has been in politics since the age of 12, he told Hunt — he has had plenty of reason to behave like a shoo-in for reelection.
He has embraced the coattails of Donald Trump more tightly than ever, in a Congressional district where the former president has won by an average of more than 55% of the vote in the last two elections.
Since first being elected to Congress in 2016 over write-in candidate Nathan Russo, the 67-year-old Carter has won reelection by an average of nearly 17% of the vote in a congressional district that with the exception of Chatham, Liberty and Glynn counties has been scarlet red for four decades.
To bolster his popularity statewide ahead of his declared interest in running for one of Georgia’s two U.S. Senate seats, possibly as soon as 2026, the multimillionaire Carter, who moved from Pooler to St. Simons last year, is aiming for a 20% margin of victory this time around.
Carter also has held a huge fund-raising advantage in the campaign.
With more access to campaign donors, incumbent candidates — whether Republican or Democrat — can amass large campaign war chests, which they tout as a barometer of their popularity and use to deter all but the most intrepid challengers. Carter is no different.
In this election cycle, his war chest has dwarfed Hewitt’s by a margin of more than 40-to-1, according to campaign finance reports filed by both candidates to the Federal Elections Commission.
As of Oct. 16, Carter reported receipts to his campaign committee totaling $2,337,173.27, including $2,067,663.13 in contributions and $235,021.07 in transfers from other “authorized” committees, according to his FEC filings. Carter ended the reporting period with $2,878,729.20 in cash on hand.
So flush is Carter’s campaign war chest that a fundraiser in The Landings in September, featuring Ohio Republican Jim Jordan, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, collected contributions not for Carter’s campaign committee but for Buddy PAC, one of his two political action committees, which help him bolster his power base in Congress.
It doesn’t appear that Carter hasn’t been forced to spend much of it on this campaign, though the scope of his campaign spending this year won’t be known until the requisite reports are filed to the Federal Elections Commission after the election. There has been no aggressive ad campaign. Carter yard signs dot some corners in Chatham County, for instance, but they’re far from pervasive.
In contrast to Carter’s bulging war chest, Hewitt has operated her campaign on a shoestring.
As of Oct. 16, Hewitt reported receipts to her campaign committee totaling $56,910, including $49,410 in contributions and a $7,500 loan, according to her FEC filings. She ended the reporting period with $1,115.50 in cash on hand.
In a speech to Skidaway Island Democrats in June, the executive director of the state Democratic Party, Kevin Olasanoye, pledged help to Hewitt’s campaign. To date, however, the state party has given little, if any, aid.
Crisscrossing the district
Carter’s advantages don’t bother Hewitt. Nor does what she views as Carter’s dismissal of her as a candidate. She knows that like many favored incumbents, there’s nothing in it for him. Why share a debate stage or television screen with your opponent and give them the credibility and oxygen?
“He looks at my fundraising and says, ‘This is a nobody. This is a nothing’,” Hewitt said.
Instead, since she declared her candidacy in July 2023, Hewitt has remained undaunted — a happy warrior — focused on the stakes, not the odds.
She believes Coastal Georgia’s seat in Congress can be wrenched free of the GOP’s four-decade grip because the region’s demographics are changing. Fading, too, is the sense of entitlement and privilege in electoral politics in Coastal Georgia that has seen political offices routinely passed from friend to friend and family member to family member.
And the retired consumer financial services executive believes that she’s the person to wrest the seat from Carter. Hers, she told The Current in an interview, is no quixotic campaign.
She isn’t standing for Congress for the experience or to be a martyr to principle; she’s in it to win, she insisted despite, among other things, the absence of airtime on Coastal Georgia radio and television stations.
“History is not the future,” Hewitt said. “The only way we’re going build the Democratic Party in Coastal Georgia is to win, and the only way we’re going to flip Coastal Georgia is to flip his seat.
“I’m a hundred percent confident I can win. A hundred percent.”
To do that, she said, she has discarded the strategy of previous Democratic candidates for the 1st District seat and reached beyond the Democratic-friendly confines of urban Chatham, Glynn and Liberty counties in pursuit of votes she believes can close the gap with Carter. Like those candidates, she also hopes to attract Republicans disgruntled with the congressman.
Her candidacy has received little, if any, airtime on Coastal Georgia radio and television stations. But for 15 months, Hewitt, 70, has crisscrossed the district, campaigning in rural counties and districts where, she believes, Democrats, especially Black Democrats, need only the encourage of an outside face to begin making their voices heard.
Burdened by a legacy of poverty and institutional racism, these areas of Coastal Georgia suffer from an “inertia problem,” she said. “I’ve intentionally given a very vigorous message because I want to let residents of these more remote and rural areas that you have the power. You have the votes.”
Hewitt said she has been frequently in conversation with faith leaders and their congregations in her travels through the 1st District. To be sure, they’re concerned about the state of health care and education. Most of all, though, they’re worried about the state of our democracy and want her to do everything she can to save it.
“They know that in a second Trump presidency, their communities will not fare well because of the racism promulgated by Trump and the White nationalists in his party.”
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