DeKalb election watchers made last week's surprising Republican victory in a solidly Democratic district official on Monday: Republican JaNice Van Ness defeated former Democratic state Rep. Tonya Anderson by an 84-vote margin.
Van Ness' special election runoff victory has prompted much hand-wringing among Democrats who wonder how their candidate lost in a Lithonia-based Senate district that voted more than 70 percent for President Barack Obama.
Some soul-searching Democrats cite a range of reasons for the loss, including higher than expected apathy for a special election the week after Thanksgiving and not enough focus to counter turnout in a conservative snippet of the district in Rockdale County.
The Washington Examiner weighed in with some analysis:
Does this mean that middle-income blacks are trending Republican? Maybe, maybe not. Van Ness undoubtedly benefited from local ties: a small business owner and found of a private school, she was elected to the Rockdale County Board of Commissioners in 2006 and 2010. Turnout was low and she probably benefited from personal ties. But it does suggest that in the post-Obama years more black voters than in the past may be willing to give serious consideration to Republican candidates.
Georgia Democrats push back hard on that line of thinking. Some consider the seat a short-term "rental" that will inevitably flip back to the party with a turnout surge for November's presidential election.
Another Democratic operative sent this analysis our way:
Kind of fascinating demographic change. District as a whole is ~ 57k black and 26k white. Over 65 is actually majority white! Guess who votes in special elections?
Van Ness, meanwhile, could be an interesting test case as she tries to navigate the political divide in an overwhelmingly Democratic district. She told the Rockdale Citizen she wants to elevate the district to a "new level."
"The accomplishment of winning this race will only improve the view of District 43 to be open-minded in electing someone that will work for all of the residents and businesses in Newton, Rockdale and Lithonia," she told the newspaper.
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President Barack Obama's call to restrict firearms purchases for people on the government's no-fly list serves up a timely reminder of a famed Georgia leader's perpetual struggles with the list.
Civil rights icon and longtime Rep. John Lewis revealed he, too, had been snarled by the watchlist dragnet. According to his office, the Georgia Democrat had over the course of a year been held up 35 to 40 times. Despite reaching out to a number of federal agencies over that period, Lewis' name had remained on a list.
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Atlanta Magazine's Max Blau has a thought-provoking piece this week about annexations and the upcoming Atlanta mayor's race.
He notes the city's changing racial makeup - more than 20,000 whites have moved to Atlanta since Mayor Kasim Reed took office - could make two annexation bids 20 miles apart extraordinarily interesting.
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Enter Sandtown A bucolic, largely black exurb outside I-285 just west of Camp Creek Parkway, the community of Sandtown and its neighbors voted in 2007 against forming their own municipality of South Fulton. Then, last spring, state Representative Pat Gardner, an Atlanta Democrat, introduced twin annexation bills at the behest of the city: one covering Druid Hills and the surrounding area, home to nearly 39,000 people; the other aimed at Sandtown and adjacent land, part of an area that includes an estimated 17,500 residents. Neither bill moved far last year, but both could be taken up after the 2016 Georgia General Assembly convenes on January 11.
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Steve Labovitz, the former Atlanta chief of staff and mastermind of special tax districts, wants you to know that new sports stadiums can sometimes transform a city.
Here's a snippet from his column in the Saporta Report about the impact of the Mercedes-Benz Stadium budding in downtown Atlanta:
Even amid a small, but vocal, chorus of critics, the public has kicked in to make the project a reality. In my view, their contributions—an investment in our city's notoriety—will be honored and rewarded,.
Already, corporate partners and investment is enthusiastically streaming into the Westside area by outside interests who wish to capitalize on the new stadium, sharing in the vision that newly constructed stadiums can assist in the revitalization of neighboring communities.
Not only does this new commerce mean expanded revenues for state and local governments, but also quality jobs in a community that desperately requires them.
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Critics of Gov. Nathan Deal's expansion of the Court of Appeals made their case in court on Monday, arguing that the governor didn't have the constitutional authority to appoint the three judges to the bench and instead should have called for special elections.
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