Democrats are hungry, Republicans complacent and all politics is national
The late Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Tip O’Neill, famously opined that “all politics is local.”
It might have once been, but it is not anymore. When Democrats are in the White House, Republicans vote as if their very lives depend on it. When Republicans are in the White House, Democrats do the same.
Here in Georgia, that just cost the Republicans two seats on the Public Service Commission, giving Democrats their first two statewide elected seats in several years.
Democrats are already spinning their victory. It is for working voters, a rebuke to high energy prices, etc. etc. etc. They won and have the pleasure of defining their narrative. But the truth is actually something else.
Democrats won these two statewide races in Georgia because the statewide races were specially set for the general election that coincides with municipal elections. Democrats had filed a lawsuit over the election of the Public Service Commission. They lost that battle in court but won the war by getting the two contested seats moved to an off-off-year election.
2025 election was a ‘perfect storm’ for Democrats
When I was on the city council in Macon, there were 15 seats and it was the only partisan municipality in the state. The default for cities in Georgia is for municipal elections to be nonpartisan.
Everyone may know Andre Dickens is a Democrat, but he does not run as a Democrat for mayor of Atlanta. My friend Michael Caldwell may have been a Republican member of the state Legislature, but as the just reelected mayor of Woodstock, the only party he belongs to is the one the city hosts downtown on weekends.
Notwithstanding all of that, generally in Georgia, populations in incorporated areas tend to be more Democratic-leaning with Republican voters situated more outside city and town limits in suburban, exurban and rural areas.
Republican areas of the state tend to have fewer incorporated areas.
Forsyth County, for example — long a Republican stronghold — is 247 square miles of land with only 7.23 square miles incorporated into the county seat of Cumming, where Mayor Troy Brumbalow just won reelection without opposition.
Forsyth County had an Education SPLOST (Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax) on the ballot, which was the only countywide election outside of the Public Service Commission races, and which passed 19,166 to 11,654 votes.
The result was the perfect storm for Democrats. Local municipalities in Georgia, which lean Democratic, had elections. Republican voters were already outnumbered. Additionally, Democrats are hungry for a win and Republicans, as a party in Georgia, have collapsed.
Republican infighting contributed to losses
I have a great deal of respect for Josh McKoon, the Republican Party chairman, who has to balance old-school Republicans who took the state back from the Democrats at the turn of the 21st century and new-school cranks who buy every conspiracy theory peddled on the internet.
Being chairman of the Georgia Republican Party right now is about like being the public liaison to a psych ward. The Republican Party in Georgia has fought each other so much, been a part of so many lawsuits and alienated so many politicians and donors there was no way and no money to effectively mobilize Republican voters.
With Donald Trump in the White House, Democrats just needed to turn on the vote signal over Fulton County and have every Democrat in the metro Atlanta area rush to the polls to stop Republicans.
Republicans needed a ground game, a door-knocking effort, a major ad campaign and hope. All they had was one crazy lady who thinks the moon landing was fake and the Earth is flat.
Democrats should not overinterpret their wins. They won. Congratulations to them. They will have two seats on the Public Service Commission and be able to offer a diversity of views that, in competition with other ideas, improve the deliberations of the Public Service Commission.
It is also true that in 1992, the first sign of a political shift in Georgia came with a no-name Republican surprising everyone by winning a Public Service Commission seat. (That was Robert “Bobby” Baker Jr., the first Republican elected to statewide office in Georgia since Reconstruction).
Unlike this week, that race did not have the PSC at the top of the ballot, but toward the bottom.
Kemp will not be able to help in 2026 like he did in 2022
2026 will not be 2025. Republicans still have a better operation in election years with Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp still on the scene.
The Republican Party will not be calling the shots in the general election. Instead, a gubernatorial candidate will be calling the shots.
Democrats will be motivated because Trump is in the White House, but Republicans will be motivated to stop further Democrat advances.
Republicans would be smart to understand Democrats are hungry. Democrats might nominate former Republican Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan not because they really like him, but because they think he can win.
In 2018, Democratic gubernatorial nominee Stacey Abrams came close to Kemp in the general election because voters saw Kemp more as a proxy for Trump than his own man, and suburban voters might have voted for Trump over Harris in 2024, but they still do not really care for him.
In 2026, the Republican nominee will need to be his own man, like Kemp in 2022, and not just a proxy for Trump.
Ground game will matter. Republican infighting will matter. Trump will matter.
Republicans have not had to fight hard to win in Georgia for quite some time. They had Republican voting majorities and then they had Kemp doing the heavy lifting for them.
Now, Kemp will step back and someone else will have to step forward and face a ravenous Democratic Party hungry for a win.
Neither side will have an easy time.
Erick Erickson is host of the nationally syndicated “Erick Erickson Show,” heard weekdays from noon to 3 p.m. on WSB Radio. He is also now a contributor to the AJC.
