Romney keeps GOP streak alive in Georgia
Mitt Romney cruised to victory in Georgia on Tuesday, adding the Peach State’s 16 electoral votes to his bid for the White House.
President Barack Obama was on pace late Tuesday to fall short of the 47 percent he received in Georgia in 2008, when Republican John McCain won the state.
Mitzi Long, a 69-year-old DeKalb County voter, said Obama didn’t earn her vote.
“The president hasn’t done what he promised to do four years ago, and I’m just not sure he would do those things in the next four years, either,” she said.
Romney’s win in Georgia extends the state’s streak of voting for the GOP presidential nominee in every election since 1992, when Democrat Bill Clinton captured the state with just 43 percent of the state, thanks to Ross Perot’s siphoning of votes from then-President George H.W. Bush.
Neither candidate fought for Georgia, putting their campaign efforts into more competitive states. But both visited often — to raise cash. Romney raised more than $10 million in the state while Georgians contributed more than $8 million to Obama. Both campaigns raised millions more for their parties and affiliated groups.
Eric Tanenblatt of Atlanta, a national co-chairman of Romney’s finance committee, said the Georgia outcome was well deserved.
“Gov. Romney had the right message for Georgia voters who have been struggling economically and wanted a change,” said Tanenblatt, who was at the Romney campaign’s election night party in Boston. “Gov. Romney was the candidate who represented change.”
Romney was dominating across North and South Georgia, with only a thin line of blue counties across the state’s middle going for Obama, in addition to traditional Democratic strongholds in metro Atlanta.
Democrats here, meanwhile, said they supported the president’s re-election knowing it might not matter in Georgia.
“I hope it helps,” Decatur resident Linda Bricker, 69, said.
And even if it doesn’t, she said at least it might help him win the national popular vote.
Olympia Latimore, 48, of south Fulton, said Obama was the right choice on issues important to her.
“It was a lot — Social Security, retirement, old people, children and middle class,” she said.
But, for Ashley Mayer, 28, of Cumming, it was a matter of trust. A vote for Obama, she said, would be tantamount to a vote for government. She voted for Romney.
“If I can’t trust the government to handle mail properly, I don’t think they should be in charge of my internal organs,” she said, referring to her opposition to Obama’s national health care overhaul.
State Sen. Jason Carter, D-Decatur, earlier Tuesday sent a message via Twitter that 2012 would be the last year Georgia is a solidly red state. Later, as Georgia’s hue was indeed confirmed, Carter did not back down.
“You have a lot of things combining,” he said. “You have a change in demographics, but you also have a governing coalition in Georgia that’s untenable. There’s fewer and fewer people who identify with either party, and independents are going to stop breaking to Republicans.”
Georgia GOP chairwoman Sue Everhart, however, begged to differ. She said it was Obama’s policies that drove the outcome.
“For four years, we have struggled under the weight of the Obama administration’s job-killing and debt-exploding policies, and the time for real, substantive change in the direction of our country has arrived,” Everhart said.
