The GOP is looking for votes in unusual places

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AJC Election Central has everything you need as early voting is underway for Georgia's July 22 primary runoff, with key congressional, state and local races still up for grabs. Don't forget, winners move on to the Nov. 4 general election. Log on to MyAJC.com/georgiapolitics for the latest election news, including these useful tools:

This is a strange place for the Republican Party to stake its future. Quitman County is one of Georgia’s least populous spots. It’s also one of the poorest and, dubiously for the GOP, solidly Democratic.

It’s here, in this county of hardly 2,000 people about 150 miles southwest of Atlanta, where the state GOP is trying to revive a long dormant Republican organization.

As Democrats seek to take advantage of an influx of newcomers and a growing tide of minority voters, the GOP is launching a quiet counteroffensive to beef up support in future battlegrounds. And Quitman is one of a handful of places where the party is toiling to build its infrastructure.

The GOP’s goal here goes well beyond swinging control of the County Commission. Party leaders from Gov. Nathan Deal on down acknowledge that Republicans need to make more inroads to minority voters in places such as Quitman, where blacks narrowly outnumber whites.

But it’s also an effort to wring every vote possible from conservative-leaning white residents, who have long served as the backbone of the party and drove the GOP’s ascent to power in Georgia over the past 12 years.

“It’s not something that’s going to change overnight,” said Joseph Brannan, a Columbus radio executive and regional Republican leader who is an architect of this strategy. “And I don’t think it will for this election cycle. In 2014, the Republicans will be OK. But looking forward, there’s reason to be worried. And this is one thing we can do to prepare for the future.”

Selling their message isn’t easy here, where Democratic roots run deep. Democrat Roy Barnes easily bested Deal in Quitman four years ago, and President Barack Obama won the county in 2008 and 2012.

Bernice Harris, who owns a local beauty supply shop on Georgetown’s main drag, said most everyone she knows votes for the candidate with a “D” next to his or her name. And Willie Williams, a landscaper, couldn’t stifle a chuckle when told of the GOP’s aims.

“Republicans won’t have much luck here,” Williams said as he sat on a beat-up folding chair outside a gas station during a break. “No luck at all. It will be a miracle for them to achieve what they want here. This has always been a Democratic county.”

So who lucked out with the task of building the GOP’s apparatus here? An ambitious business leader with an eye on bigger roles down the road.

Carvel Lewis, born to a prominent local black family, started the first College Republicans chapter at Hampton University, where he ticked off more than a few classmates at the historically black college when he persuaded then-President George H.W. Bush to deliver a campus address.

He later became a speechwriter for the president and a GOP operative in Washington and Atlanta before moving back to Quitman to help run a family funeral home business. Since his return, he’s preached a big-tent message to fellow partisans, including some who haven’t welcomed him with open arms.

“I haven’t always been a favorite,” he said. “But we have to be a group of inclusion and not exclusion.”

Lewis, a county commissioner who one day hopes to run for higher office, said the GOP’s message of fiscal conservatism could appeal to residents of this county, where the median household income hardly tops $30,000 and roughly one in four residents lives below the poverty line.

Most of the region’s prosperity has leaked across the Chattahoochee River to Eufaula, Ala., and downtown Georgetown, the county seat, is bookended by a pawnshop and a shuttered grocery, with several check-cashing and short-term loan spots nestled in between.

The five-member nonpartisan commission is generally ruled by a left-leaning coalition, but Lewis said he's been pleasantly surprised to see ranks break over a recent debate for a leaner budget. And some residents have a track record of voting for Republicans in local elections. State Rep. Gerald Greene, a Democrat-turned-Republican, has represented the area for more than 30 years.

“The average African-American won’t admit they’re voting for a Republican,” Lewis said. “But most voted for Gerald Greene in the last election. They vote for the man and not the party.”

The message from Democrats is simple: Keep dreaming. They noted the strong leftward lean in Quitman and other counties where Republicans have recently reorganized, including Albany’s Dougherty County, which Obama took by a more than 2-to-1 margin.

“It sounds like most of the areas they’re ‘rebooting’ are areas where President Obama won with 70 percent,” said Michael Smith, a spokesman for the Democratic Party of Georgia. “It’s gonna take more than unloading a few chairs and a box full of apologies into a vacant storefront to expand their electorate. They have a lot of explaining to do.”

Alan Abramowitz, an Emory University political scientist, said the strategy seems dubious to him as well. Even if the GOP can win left-leaning counties as small as Quitman, why bother?

“Those types of counties account for a small and declining share of the electorate in Georgia,” he said. “How many votes are there to mine in such places? And my hunch is that the nonvoters in those areas are disproportionately African-Americans or Hispanics” more likely to lean to the left.

Brannan, the chairman of the GOP’s 2nd District, which stretches across southwest Georgia, said the party wants to make sure Quitman Republicans have a say in its direction. But he also acknowledges that as the demographics change, votes in metro Atlanta will be harder to find and the GOP will need to offset the losses elsewhere.

“From a broader GOP strategy, every vote outside of Atlanta counts. For a while, it was easy to organize in Atlanta and we’d get votes there,” he said. “But as Atlanta shifts more blue, each vote outside the city becomes more valuable.”

State GOP spokesman Ryan Mahoney wouldn’t put a price tag on the efforts, but he said the party has hired two full-time staffers “focused on creating a Republican stronghold in South Georgia.” So far, 10 counties have reorganized and the party hopes to have a GOP organization in all 159 counties in the next few years.

Interviews with Quitman residents suggest some could be receptive. Christopher Hovey, the owner of Hovey’s Auto in Georgetown, has lived here for about 20 years and said the local political climate is due for a change.

“I think both parties are lying cheats, but I tend to side with Republicans more,” he said, taking a drag from a cigarette during a break from fixing a tire. “The Democrats are what brought Obama to power, and I’d rather be among Republicans. Even if there are only 300 of them here.”

As for Lewis, he’s held two GOP meetings so far. The first attracted five curious participants. The next he had 11 participants. This month he hopes to double that.

“Every vote counts,” he said.