All politics is local — racial politics included.
The AJC’s exclusive analysis found a broad pattern of black under-representation at the level of Georgia’s 159 county commissions. The trend is especially pronounced in counties with at-large elections and significant black populations that fall short of a solid majority.
Every county has its own story, though. Here are snapshots of three counties that both illustrate the prevailing dynamic and depart from it in surprising, instructive ways:
Dodge County: So close, so far
Dodge County, where a quarter of voters are black, elects four commissioners from districts and a fifth at large. The district with the greatest concentration of African Americans, District 4, has a bare majority: not quite 51 percent.
It used to be represented by a black commissioner, but in the most recent election, a white candidate won. That made the commission all-white.
Eschol Clark lives in another district, with far fewer black voters. When rains soak his neighborhood of sandy dirt roads, school buses sometimes get stuck in muddy ruts.
“It’s about like you’re going down in a soup,” Clark said recently. “You’ve got to get someone to pull you out.”
Clark and a few other black residents have complained about their roads to the Board of Commissioners. But Clark doesn’t think much will change.
“We get ignored a lot,” he said.
The county is due — some would say overdue — for redistricting. The last time that happened was in 1998. It will probably happen again next year.
It’s possible to draw new districts and maintain one in which African Americans are a majority, said Fred McBride, a demographer who does work for the American Civil Liberties Union. McBride analyzed 2010 Dodge County census data for the AJC.
But with no African Americans on the commission, John Battle, president of the local NAACP, worries that District 4 won’t remain even nominally majority-black.
Dodge’s commission chairman, Dan McCranie, doesn’t see why blacks would be worried. Take the complaints over roads, he said — the real problem is tight budgets, not discrimination.
“I would say everybody in the county is treated equally,” McCranie said.
But black residents who see it differently have a ready symbol to point to: the Confederate flag that flies over a war memorial at the courthouse. Displayed since 2002, it was supposed to fly once a year. But it never came down.
Two years ago the NAACP branch pressed for its removal. Instead, commissioners, citing fear of lawsuits from flag supporters, voted to fly it year-round — with the lone black commissioner dissenting.
“They got listened to,” McCranie said of the people who wanted the flag removed. “I’m sure it upsets some people. But some people love it.”
Fulton County: Color it partisan
In Georgia’s largest county, African Americans dominate local politics. Five of seven Fulton County commissioners are black, though considerably fewer than half the county’s active voters are black.
The makeup of the commission is likely to change in 2015, though, thanks to a Republican-leaning redistricting plan approved by the General Assembly this year.
Although the plan has sparked a bitter, racially charged feud, the impetus for it arguably arose from party more than race. In any case, the battle demonstrates how inextricably the two have become linked in the post-Voting Rights Act world of southern politics.
In the South, virtually all blacks are Democrats. The vast majority of whites who identify with a party are Republicans, especially in the suburbs.
Currently, five of Fulton’s seven commissioners are elected by district, with two, including the chairman, elected at-large. Both at-large representatives – Chairman John Eaves and Commissioner Robb Pitts – are black Democrats.
The redistricting plan came about because Republicans won control of the county’s legislative delegation in 2012. This spring, they pushed their plan through over the objections of the Democrat-dominated commission.
It converts Pitts’ seat to a new, suburban north Fulton district. Given the demographics and politics of north Fulton, that could mean a third white Republican commissioner. With Pitts’ seat disappearing, he may challenge Eaves for the chairman’s job during next year’s commission elections.
The plan also pits two black Democratic incumbents – Bill Edwards and Emma Darnell – against each other in the same district.
North Fulton residents argue that they’ve long been underrepresented on the commission and receive fewer county services as a result.
“I think the biggest issue on the Board of Commissioners today is not necessarily race, it’s the lack of geographic diversity,” said Buckhead resident Bernie Tokarz.
South Fulton resident Benny Crane thinks race probably played a role in the redistricting. But good luck, he said, in teasing out where partisanship ends and race begins.
“It’s almost inseparable,” he said.
Hancock County: Against the tide
In 1968, Hancock County, which now has the largest black majority in Georgia, became the first black-run county in the U.S. since Reconstruction, according to historian Stephen Tuck.
The man who led the takeover, John McCown, became famous for bringing federal grants to the poverty-stricken area. His term in county leadership was shadowed by allegations of mismanagement, but many black voters revered him. Though he died in 1976, the electoral power he forged lived on.
Then, in the early 1990s, Chris Coates got a call from some white voters in the county. Coates, then a Georgia lawyer, had a reputation for helping black voters force counties to abandon at-large election systems. In Hancock it was whites who were shut out and fed up.
“I viewed that as a problem, just like the all-white commissions I had sued in Georgia,” Coates said.
Coates went to the county's state senator, Wilbur Baugh. Baugh introduced a bill, and in 1993 the county changed to districts, with just the chair at large.
The setup has improved governance in the county by adding checks and balances in a body that formerly was a clique, said the former owner of the local newspaper, Allen Haywood. He is white and spurred the electoral makeover by publishing a 1992 survey on the issue.
In a county where three in four voters is black, there still are no majority-white districts. But two are stronger white than the county at large, and one of those elected a white commissioner.
Here’s the real kicker, though: Two other current commissioners are white, giving whites a majority on the commission.
One is Sistie Hudson, who spent 16 years as a state legislator. When her legislative district was redrawn, she ran for the post of commission chair in a countywide election and won.
“She’s got quite a track record,” said one black voter, John Michael McCown, son of the old, black boss. He hopes Hudson, with all her connections, can boost the destitute county by snagging state and federal resources.
Another seat, in a district that is 91 percent African American, went vacant when an African American commissioner was forced to resign under indictment. A white woman won that post.
Voters simply want results, McCown said, and the recent black-dominated commissions had not produced.
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