Democrats hope to crack Republicans’ rural dominance

Robert Holmes isn’t entirely certain how this election can help revive his hometown. But he is certain, he says, that politicians can be doing more for rural Georgia than they’re doing now.

“I feel like they’re ignoring us. We don’t get a lot of publicity,” he said as he walked past shuttered stores in downtown Dublin. “They have so much going on up there and they seem to forget about us.”

Rural Georgia’s political conversion from “Yellow Dog” Democrats — who would sooner vote for a canine than another party — to staunch Republicans has helped the GOP dominate state politics for more than a decade. Democrats hope that growing numbers of younger and minority voters can reverse the tide, but this year’s legacy ticket also hopes to rekindle their affair with the voters who once were the party’s backbone.

State Sen. Jason Carter has stumped at factories and farms to press his claim that Gov. Nathan Deal hasn’t done enough to support rural businesses, reminding audiences of his famous peanut-farming grandfather. Michelle Nunn speaks often of her childhood on the family farm in Perry and the work of her popular, cross-partisan father, four-term U.S. Sen. Sam Nunn.

Republicans, too, have fought to retain their base. Deal has crisscrossed South Georgia, touting his administration's tax cuts and promising better economic news on the way. GOP Senate candidate David Perdue claims his own rural, Houston County background, and he vows to fight Environmental Protection Agency regulations that have groups such as the Georgia Farm Bureau riled up.

The voters that greet them here are hardened by an extra dose of skepticism from years of being off the political radar.

“The candidates have made so many promises. And as soon as they are elected, it’s like there’s a different story,” said Jeff Allen, who lives outside the small town of Dudley in southeast Georgia. “They only pay attention to us in election years.”

By sheer numbers, it’s not hard to see why. Census figures show Georgia’s population south of Macon, about halfway through the state, is about 2.5 million. The denser remainder of the state accounts for the other 7 million-plus — mostly in metro Atlanta.

Georgia’s political gravity has inexorably followed that population shift. Saxby Chambliss, the outgoing U.S. senator, is the only statewide politician from south of metro Atlanta, though the new crop of candidates for top offices has some rural voters cheering.

Both Nunn and Perdue are from Middle Georgia’s Houston County, where Nunn’s family still operates a farm and the Perdue clan has deep roots. Deal was born in Millen and grew up in Sandersville, while Carter traces his roots to Plains, the southwest Georgia town of 600 where his grandfather still lives.

At a recent U.S. Senate debate in Perry, Nunn and Perdue jabbed each other over rural issues. Perdue chided Nunn for an internal campaign memo prepared by her consultants that ranked rural issues and agriculture near the bottom of issues she needed to study.

Nunn swung back by attacking Perdue for his vow to vote against this year's Farm Bill, which sets agriculture subsidy and nutrition program policy. Perdue has said the bill did not make enough cuts to the food stamp program.

In the governor’s race, Carter has used the plight of several shuttered rural hospitals to press his call for an expansion of Medicaid — a proposal Deal has rejected as too costly. Nunn backs the expansion as well.

Carter also has linked unemployment rates that topped 10 percent in swaths of South Georgia to Deal's economic outlook.

“We have been building an economy in rural Georgia based on the lowest possible wages,” Carter said in an interview after a recent campaign stop in Albany. “And I believe there are durable, good jobs out there for rural Georgia — in processing and distribution of agriculture, in new ways of generating energy. And all of that has been off the table.”

His surrogates have been even more forceful. Former first lady Rosalynn Carter, at a campaign stop in Valdosta, told a crowd that “South Georgia is losing clout” under Deal. And U.S. Rep. Sanford Bishop, at a church in Albany, said Carter’s rural values are “seeped in his DNA.”

Deal, for his part, said he has worked to craft a rural policy that brings more jobs to the region. And he scoffed at Carter’s recent assertion that Georgia’s education struggles only hit home after he toured school districts across the state as part of a special Senate task force.

“I have not forgotten rural Georgia. I grew up in rural Georgia. That’s where my roots are,” Deal said in an interview during a recent swing through the southeast part of the state. “That’s where my family heritage is. It’s ridiculous for somebody who, when he decided to run for governor, left downtown Atlanta and took an epiphany tour around the state.”

Republicans still hold a strong advantage in rural areas, particularly among whites.

At a recent GOP fish fry in Candler County, Kent Campbell, 75, copped to being a Sam Nunn supporter. But Campbell said there is no way he would vote for Michelle Nunn because “I ain’t voting for nobody that is for Obama.”

As for why he converted from Democrat to Republican, Campbell said: “I grew up and saw where my taxes was going. … The liberals have took over this country. If conservatives don’t take back this country, we’re going to be in a world of hurt.”

Holmes, as he plods the streets of Dublin, considers himself among the lucky ones. He landed a job as a technician at a local manufacturing firm. But he has friends who drive more than an hour each way to Macon or Savannah to work. And he said most people in town are forced to shop elsewhere.

“There’s one thing I want politicians to remember,” he said. “We are voters, too.”