Ready For The Next Carter?

Without a lot of fanfare, Georgia has been having a spate of elections to fill vacant seats in both the state assembly and to fill the US House of Representative seat that was formally held by Nathan Deal, who resigned after his no vote on healthcare to pursue his race for governor.

Neither race had much suspense as far as which party would win, rather which person. Nathan Deal's district is solid Republican, more importantly it is labeled conservative and no Democrat even challenged for the seat, leaving it up to the 6 Republican/Libertarian/Independent candidates to duke it out. As expected, with so many people on the ballot, a runoff election will now have to be held to determine who gets to warm that seat temporarily. I say temporarily because regardless of who wins this round, they will immediately have to turn around and begin campaigning for the regular primary election scheduled for July. This creates the unique chance for the folks of the 9th Congressional district to be voting 5 times between now and November. This was the first which now leads to the runoff election in June. In July are the primaries for the regular elections, which has 7 declared candidates. Should another runoff be necessary it will be held in August. Finally in November will be regular nationwide general election.

The other election held was to fill an empty seat in the Georgia State Assembly which was vacated by the retirement of current that seat holder. What made this race interesting was not only the inclusion of Jimmy Carter's grandson on the ballot, but also the degree of voter turnout. The district is solid Democrat with no Republicans on the ballot, but once again there was representation from the Libertarian and Independent party.

Jason Carter won the seat, which state law requires to be filled even though our legislative session is over, making this a largely symbolic win. What is important however to those who follow politics closely is the voter turnout, which in this solid Democrat district was only about 10%. It is a clear indication that the fervor that swept through the Democrats in the last presidential election has evaporated, and portends even more trouble for the Dems in November. If they can't even rally the bedrock of their constituency to turn out to vote for the grandson of the now second worst president it does not bode well for them.

I am not foolish enough to believe that this section of the state can be seriously challenged by the Republicans. C'mon these people are represented by Hank Johnson, the representative who has concerns about Guam sinking from having too many military personnel stationed on it, and before that they had Cynthia McKinney. They will turn out to vote for the person with a D behind the name, mostly out of respect for the highest grade they achieved in high school, but it does spell bad news for the Dems since it looks like their base is going back into the closet.

The Carter name was enough for him to win and now that his foot is in the door we can expect to hear more from him.