In the broadly conservative state of Georgia, the majority of folks who vote have chosen Republicans to lead state government for nearly a generation. Fair enough, but it also means that the minority party has lacked any kind of formal check on power for years.
Because they’re a minority in the Georgia House and Senate, Democrats by-and-large cannot pass or repeal laws in the state. Nor do Democrats run any of the important committees where chairs can squash bills just by declining to hear them at all.
Informal powers exist, and the minority party uses them. There are speeches, messaging bills, communications, trying to exploit splits in the GOP. And there’s also the strategy of working with Republicans, especially on nonpartisan issues, in committees and in conversation, trying to get bills amended.
Republicans have had a few anxious moments, of course. Voters statewide have put two Democrats in the U.S. Senate. In 2016, the blue dot of Atlanta expanded as far out in the suburbs as Newt Gingrich’s old stronghold in Cobb County. Folks began to wonder if a statewide flip to blue was coming.
But from that day till this, no part of state government has turned blue.
So one more effect of one-party rule: Most Republicans in the legislature have never been in a minority.
Some Republicans will point to the years of full Democrat control before the turn of the millennium. Heck, some of them were Democrats before the turn of the millennium. But that was also a different era, when almost all successful Deep South politicians were Democrats, conservatives and liberals alike.
But either way, for Georgians, it’s meant one-party rule.