Democrats lose lock on rural Georgia

[Wnghs2007]

This may be a little long but oh well.

http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/election/0704georgia/06rural.html
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MCRAE — A sign beside U.S. 341 outside this Telfair County town tells of a not-too-distant era when Democrats dominated Georgia politics.

The historical marker identifies the home of two Georgia governors, its white columns now barely visible through overgrown greenery: Eugene Talmadge was swept into office in 1932, promising to be a friend to the "poor dirt farmer," and was re-elected three times, dying on the eve of his fourth term. His son, Herman, went from the Governor's Mansion to the U.S. Senate for 24 years.

But the times, they are a-changing.

Although Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore narrowly carried Telfair County in 2000, two years later the birthplace of a Democratic dynasty helped elect the state's first Republican governor since Reconstruction.

In the Talmadge days, the July 20 Democratic primary would have effectively determined Georgia's officeholders. Now, rural Georgia is up for grabs.

"It's the pivotal swing vote," said Chris Grant, a political scientist at Georgia College and State University in Milledgeville. "It's where elections are won in the state now."

Rural America may also be where this year's presidential election will be won, especially in swing states such as Michigan, Minnesota and Ohio. In 2000, President Bush carried the rural vote by a significant margin, but a recent poll for the Los Angeles Times shows his appeal slipping there.

Bush, who had the support of 55 percent of rural voters polled last November, now leads Sen. John Kerry by 47 to 41 percent. Analysts attribute the slide to concern over Iraq and the economy.

Kerry, hoping to capitalize on a possible Bush vulnerability, toured the Midwest last week, promising better access to health care, incentives to bring broadband connections to rural areas, and investment in renewable fuels. The Kerry effort began as the Bush administration introduced the Rural Business Investment Program to make venture capital investment money available to rural enterprises.

Disgust with Democrats

Gov. Sonny Perdue grasped the importance of rural voters in 2002 when many of Georgia's politicians and pundits were paying attention to the cities and suburbs. Perdue's opponent, then-Gov. Roy Barnes, a Democrat from Cobb County, carried the urban counties by almost 200,000 votes; Perdue, a son of Middle Georgia who had left the Democratic Party, took the suburbs by a similar count. But among the one-in-every-five Georgia voters outside those areas, Perdue walloped Barnes to win the governorship.

Many of those voters will determine the balance of Georgia's congressional delegation this year. Some of the most hotly contested races in the country are in largely rural Georgia districts. In the 3rd, which includes Telfair County, Republican Calder Clay is forcing a rematch with Rep. Jim Marshall, a Democrat. Last week, Vice President Dick Cheney campaigned for Clay, who lost by a slim 1,500 votes in 2002.

Ernest Dyal, 77, a one-time aide to Gov. Herman Talmadge, worked hard to bring two-party politics to rural Middle and South Georgia. Dyal helped establish the Telfair County Republican Party 10 years ago and recently helped form a GOP political action committee that raised $50,000 in six poor rural Georgia counties.

"I got disgusted with the way the Democrats were running their business: Spend, spend, spend," Dyal explains.

Driving through McRae with Bush-Cheney stickers on his bumper, he points to a billboard advertising outdoor recreational equipment. This fall, it will urge motorists to vote for "honest, dedicated Republican candidates." It's one of four being leased by Dyal's Three Rivers PAC.

"It'll be illuminated at night," he brags.

The trend toward the Republican Party among rural Georgians is in keeping with a national movement. In 2002, the country saw "a solidification of the rural vote for Republican candidates," a trend that began in 1994, according to a report by Greenberg, Quinlan, Rosner Research Inc., a Washington-based political consulting firm. The report attributed the shift to rural voters' opposition to gun control and abortion and their conservative views about religion.

Legacy of Civil War

Georgia's country folks have been slower to move toward the GOP than those in some other parts of the nation, partly because of the continued loyalty of African-Americans — especially in South Georgia — whose roots in the Democratic Party date to the days of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

One is Mattie Horne of Helena, 78, a former employee of Roydon Wear, a children's clothing manufacturer that closed its Telfair County plant eight years ago. Horne has voted for only one Republican: Dwight D. Eisenhower.

"I'm still a Democrat," she said.

Black voters formed a bloc with the state's rural whites who, as the saying goes, were so loyal they would vote for a yellow dog over a Republican — a stand passed down in some families since the post-Civil War days when Republican leaders were imposed on the state by the victorious North.

"If you're 70 years old in Georgia, you knew someone who fought in the Civil War," said Doug Bachtel, a demographer at the University of Georgia. "There's a whole cohort that sat on the knees of relatives and talked about Sherman's march to the sea."

Like their black neighbors who lived through the hard times of the Depression, many rural whites solidified their loyalty to the Democratic Party during the Roosevelt administration's effort to help struggling workers.

While younger black rural Georgians are likely to follow their parents' lead and vote Democratic — if they vote at all — the descendants of older white rural Georgians seem less inclined to adopt a strong party identity.

"We've got a younger generation now who's not quite as intense," said M.L. Harrelson, 66, a retired state employee who chairs the Telfair County Democratic Party. "Yellow-dog Democrats — you don't have too many of those anymore."

The one place the Democratic grip seems to hold is the local courthouse. No Republican candidate qualified for a local office this year in Telfair County — a typical situation.

But even that is changing in some rural Georgia counties, where multiple Republicans are qualifying for the same office and Democratic officeholders are turning Republican. In Lee County, just north of Albany, the formerly Democratic sheriff, clerk of court, coroner, tax commissioner and a county commissioner have all joined the GOP.

"The Democrats have had lines of defense, but had to retreat," said UGA political scientist Charles Bullock. "In the '60s, '70s and '80s, Republicans might carry the state for president, but Democrats were going to carry everything else."

Fight for South Georgia

Many Georgians first voted for a Republican in 1964, when Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater became the first GOP presidential nominee to win the state since Reconstruction. Republicans took control of the congressional delegation in the 1990s, won the Governor's Mansion in 2002 and soon took the state Senate through Democratic defections. Democrats still hold a 103-76 majority in the House, with one independent.

Unlike the 2002 races, the earliest Republican victories — including former Sen. Mack Mattingly's historic defeat of Herman Talmadge in 1980 — were driven by surburban voters.

"The question this year is can Democrats hold on to the statehouse," Bullock said. "With Republicans now holding most North Georgia seats, the battle will be fought in South Georgia."

One statehouse seat considered in play is House District 154, which includes Telfair County. Telfair native Lon Hamilton, 48, is running as a Democrat against Republican Jay Roberts, 34, of Ocilla, the incumbent. Hamilton, who owns the Southern Star Grill in McRae, is a first-time candidate whose political experience consists primarily of cooking for Democratic candidates' fund-raisers. Roberts farms about 700 acres of cotton, peanuts and watermelons and manages a cotton gin.

Both candidates say they will focus on education, health care and building an economic infrastructure that will draw jobs to an area no longer supported by family farms.

With a state constitutional amendment forbidding same-sex marriage on the ballot, they acknowledge that most voters in the district oppose gay unions. But political scientists say such issues seldom trump practical concerns in the voting booth at the local level.

"The issues that move people today are not flip terms like 'pro-life,' 'pro-choice' and 'gay marriage,' " said Matt Towery, who heads Insider Advantage, an Atlanta-based political media and polling firm. "Instead, it's the things that really jab at the heart of their daily life."

Those issues also drove politics back in the Talmadges' day, but both the political and physical landscapes have changed, said UGA agricultural economist John McKissick. Gene Talmadge's "poor dirt farmer" has been swallowed up by agribusiness. Food and fiber production is still a top Georgia industry, "but there are fewer of those folks actually on the farm," McKissick said.

Some say the political parties have also changed since the Talmadges' time, as the Republicans have absorbed the social positions of conservative Christians, and the Democrats, at least nationally, have stood for openness to abortion rights and, to a lesser extent, same-sex unions.

Sen. Zell Miller, a Democratic former governor who is supporting President Bush, says the shift has put the Democratic Party out of touch with ordinary folks.

"The modern South and rural America are as foreign to our Democratic leaders as some place in Asia or Africa," Miller, who hails from the North Georgia mountains, wrote in his recent book "A National Party No More: The Conscience of a Conservative Democrat." "In fact, they are more so."

Others believe that Democrats still offer much to appeal to the rural South.

On the state level, incumbent Democrats Secretary of State Cathy Cox and Lt. Gov. Mark Taylor, both natives of South Georgia, won their elections by large margins in 2002, carrying Telfair County. Either could be a strong challenger to Perdue in 2006, said Georgia Democratic spokesman Emil Runge. "We obviously have some good candidates who are able to communicate with people all around the state," Runge said.

But one Georgian who agrees with Miller has a familiar name. He's Herman Eugene Talmadge III, grandson and great-grandson of the two governors.

"The Democratic Party has gotten increasingly more liberal," he said.

This Talmadge is running for chairman of the Henry County Commission.

As a Republican.

[stormie_skies]

Well, if anyone can steal some votes in the rural south, its John Edwards

[Wnghs2007]

Not likely. Rural Voters Down in South Georgia know about John Edwards. They have been informed many times by Sonny Perdue. Also. Georgia always goes Republican atleast in the pass few years. So a few votes really should not count. Bush leads in our state by 15%.

[Lindaloo]

Well, if anyone can steal some votes in the rural south, its John Edwards

Not likely.