It’s an ugly losing streak Georgia’s Democrats are keen to end.
It has been 27 years since a Democrat was sworn in as the state’s governor. A Republican also has held the lieutenant governor’s office and secretary of state’s office for more than 18 years, the attorney general’s office for more than 14.
Just how eager Democrats are to end the GOP’s domination of state executive offices in this year’s midterm election was clear Thursday evening in Savannah, as seven Democrats running for their party’s gubernatorial nomination gathered for the year’s first candidate forum ahead of the May 19 primary.
The candidates hoping to help end that ignominious streak — Keisha Lance Bottoms, Olu Brown, Geoff Duncan, Jason Esteves, Derrick Jackson, Ruwa Romman, Michael Thurmond — gained needed exposure outside the capitol Atlanta, even as most voters are still paying no attention to the race and few even know who they are.
To remedy that, they presented biographies carefully framed to tout their executive and administrative experience.
On issues, the candidates made common cause, joining in highlighting what they described as a crisis in affordable housing and Medicaid, and urging a pause in data-center construction.
The candidates seldom challenged each other over their diagnoses of the state’s ills or their proposed solutions. This was no gloves-off debate, partly due to the forum’s ground rules. That will change in the weeks ahead, as pressure on the candidates to distinguish themselves from their rivals builds.
What was clear, however, is that this election cycle isn’t shaping up as any kumbaya moment for Georgia’s Democrats.
‘I found my heart’
At Thursday’s forum, the candidates — all but one a person of color — focused on presenting biographies that were carefully framed to preempt doubts about their résumés.
Despite her wide lead in a poll conducted in October, Bottoms, Atlanta’s former mayor, insisted, for instance, she wasn’t taking anything for granted. “I am here to earn your vote, continuing to listen to you, continuing to work on your issues.”
At 73, Thurmond would be the oldest person ever sworn in as Georgia’s governor if he won in November. In his rendering, that is a testament to experience and grit, not a liability: “Born on a dead-end dirt road, from the outhouse to the courthouse, to the State House, and with your vote, we going to the governor’s house.”
A former GOP lieutenant governor, Duncan bared his soul: “I used to be a Republican, and I understand there’s some skeptics, but I want to make sure you understand I haven’t lost my mind. I found my heart.”
Romman, the first Muslim woman to be elected to the Georgia House of Representatives and the first Palestinian American ever elected to public office in Georgia, laid claim to her and her family being as much a part of the fabric of the state as any other citizen.
“I was raised here. My dad is a farmer here, and my grandfather is buried here.”
‘Ready for the fight’
To the obvious delight of the nearly 1,000 people who gathered in the 1,850-seat sanctuary, the word “fight” was uttered some 31 times during the one-hour broadcast debate, most notably by Thurmond, a former Georgia Labor Commissioner and DeKalb County’s former chief executive:
“I am ready for the fight. I’m not discouraged, I’m not downtrodden, I’m not fearful about tomorrow,” he said. “I come to say to you today: Let us rise to this occasion. Let us stand up. Trump is in the White House, but God is still on this throne.”
Touting her own get-tough credentials, Bottoms, Atlanta’s former mayor, added: “I know what it’s like to have to stand up and fight against a bully.”
In other words, Democrats are eager not for harmonizers and unifiers as their candidates — gubernatorial or otherwise —but for fighters to take on President Donald Trump. Bipartisanship? Forget it.
Easier target
Will this work to end the Democrats’ losing streak and propel their candidate to the governors’ office? The candidates and party officials obviously believe so.
With Georgia’s governor limited by law to two consecutive, four-year terms, they won’t be facing the widely popular Brian Kemp. It’s an open race.
Republicans certainly will find cause to bash whoever the Democrats choose as their gubernatorial candidate. But for the first time in a decade, it won’t be Stacey Abrams, a lightning rod for GOP hostility.
They have as a target a president whose popularity has plummeted in recent months and whose campaign promise to “make America wealthy again” — a promise that figured prominently during the president’s campaign stop in Savannah in September, 2024 — seems with each passing week to be limited to the few, not the many.
Still, Thursday’s forum showed again that Trump is a far easier target on the stump than the man they’re hoping to succeed: Brian Kemp. The name of the man all the Democrats on the stage hoped to replace in the governor’s office was mentioned only four times.
Only two candidates explicitly addressed Kemp and the policies he has promoted in his past two terms as governor.
Jackson, a state representative who served in the U.S. Navy for 22 years, criticized Kemp for allegedly neglecting the state’s military servicemen and women.
Esteves chastised the state’s widely popular governor for his purported focus on Hyundai-size economic development projects at the expense of the state’s small-business people, as well as failing to stand up to Trump and curbing the devastation to Georgians wrought by the administration’s cutbacks.
“The fact that Brian Kemp has been silent when it comes to Donald Trump has impacted us. It’s impacted our farmers. It’s impacted our public health system. It’s impacted jobs. And we need a governor that’s going to speak up and speak out,” Esteves later told The Current GA.
Big night for Coastal Georgia
It wasn’t only the seven gubernatorial candidates who gained exposure Thursday evening in the one-hour televised forum. It was also a big night for Democrats — and party politics in general — in Coastal Georgia.
Accustomed to state party officials and candidates coming to the coast hat-in-hand for money but seeing little of it returned in the form of investment in party infrastructure, Coastal Georgians were for once the center of attention at the forum, the first of three such forums sponsored by the Savannah Area Chamber of Commerce, the Greater Savannah Black Chamber of Commerce, WJCL TV, the Chatham County Republican Party and the Democratic Party of Chatham County.
For some 30 minutes after the main forum, which was broadcast live, the candidates fielded questions specifically from Coastal Georgians about Coastal Georgia. That can’t help but address what many residents feel is the state capitol’s attention deficit towards the region.
Republican gubernatorial candidates and local Republicans will take their turn at a similar forum later this spring, at a date yet to be determined. The winners of their respective party primaries will return to Savannah for a forum ahead of the fall election.
Rapturous applause
As Democrats look ahead to the midterm races, one Coastal Georgian, in particular, gives them reason to hope.
That was clear on Thursday evening, when most rapturous applause wasn’t for any of the candidates on stage at Jonesville Baptist Church. Instead, it was for a recently victorious Democrat seated in the audience: Savannah’s Alicia Johnson who, along with Peter Hubbard, defeated two Republicans incumbents last November for seats on the five-member Georgia Public Service Commission.
As the cheers rained down in the church sanctuary, inspired, it seemed, as much by the welcome taste of Democratic victory as for Johnson herself, she stood silently, with a smile.