Why debates still matter in Georgia

For all the hundreds of millions of dollars worth of campaign ads, Georgia voters are about to get something they haven’t seen much of this election season.

A face-to-face confrontation between top political rivals.

A pivotal stretch of debates starting Tuesday will put some of Georgia’s biggest political names under bright lights, beginning with the only scheduled showdown between Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms and Republican Rick Jackson in the race for governor on Atlanta News First.

Two days later, Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Collins and Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff meet for the first of two debates, with Collins under pressure to show he’s still in a fight against an incumbent with experience in making these clashes go viral.

Then comes the Atlanta Press Club’s slate, which will give candidates in lower-profile races a rare statewide platform before Collins and Ossoff close out the series with their final head-to-head matchup.

This year’s lineup will offer a different sort of wrinkle. Because Libertarians failed to make the ballot, it’s a rare chance to see the two main rivals one-on-one without a third-party contender onstage.

In the race for governor, it’s the only shot. Jackson has declined the Press Club invitation and four other debates that Bottoms has accepted.

His absence is a reminder of how once-routine debates have become more complicated. Candidates weigh the benefits of fulfilling a time-honored civic duty against the risk of a damaging gaffe, an exchange that lights up social media or an opponent who makes the most of low expectations.

Georgia has plenty of recent examples of all three.

‘I don’t know’

The Atlanta Press Club’s Loudermilk-Young Debate Series has long been a fixture of Georgia campaigns. But an empty podium has become nearly as familiar as a fiery back-and-forth on the debate stage.

During the 2024 cycle, not one of the invited incumbents agreed to participate in the Press Club debates for the first time that organizers could remember. It brought empty lecterns where elected officials ought to be.

In one sense, it reflected an age-old political reality. Front-runners and incumbents sometimes see little upside to confront their opponents, while challengers have plenty of incentive to demand as many debates as possible.

But it also deprives the public of a chance to weigh the contenders for themselves.

Jackson has already made that calculation once this year.

After participating in an April debate during the GOP primary, Jackson skipped the Press Club’s June runoff showdown against Lt. Gov. Burt Jones and instead rallied with Florida U.S. Sen. Rick Scott nearby.

His absence came after a rocky moment in the earlier debate, when Jones pressed Jackson on whether his firm employed workers living in the U.S. illegally.

“You don’t have illegals working for you right now?” Jones asked twice.

“I don’t know,” Jackson said, pausing for a beat before saying that his healthcare firm and other companies hire thousands of people a year. “We obey the laws.”

The exchange quickly became fodder for a new round of attack ads from his GOP rival.

This time, Bottoms and Jackson will square off in a different sort of debate that will feature a modified town hall format and questions from undecided voters.

A breakout moment

Six years ago, Ossoff was the challenger pressing an incumbent to meet him onstage.

His 2020 campaign against Republican U.S. Sen. David Perdue featured two debates, including an October showdown in Savannah that became one of the Democrat’s breakout moments.

Both candidates landed plenty of blows to fire up their bases. Perdue tried to tie Ossoff to Chinese Communists and cast the Democrat as a liberal rubber stamp. Ossoff hammered Perdue over his stock trading during the pandemic.

But Ossoff’s campaign proved particularly adept at turning the clash into social media ammunition.

Near the end of the hourlong showdown, Ossoff labeled Perdue a “crook” and accused him of misleading Georgians about the coronavirus outbreak.

Even as Perdue’s campaign team was celebrating his performance at a nearby Waffle House, that Ossoff attack went viral, drawing millions of views beyond the more meager TV audience that watched it live.

The two never shared a debate stage again.

Perdue withdrew from a third debate after President Donald Trump scheduled a northwest Georgia rally for the same day. And when both candidates advanced to the January runoff, Perdue rejected the Atlanta Press Club’s invitation for another faceoff.

Ossoff used the half-hour broadcast to press his case, even posing a question to the empty lectern representing Perdue. And for the rest of the race, Ossoff dispatched an aide dressed as a chicken to Perdue’s events to mock his no-show.

A low bar

Two years later, another Georgia Senate debate showed how expectations matter as much as the showdowns themselves.

For months in 2022, Republican Herschel Walker played a will-he-or-won’t-he game flirting with whether he would debate Democratic U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock after skipping forums during the GOP primary.

When the two sides finally agreed to an October clash in Savannah, the stakes were unusually high for Walker.

His campaign was reeling from allegations that he had paid for an ex-girlfriend’s abortion despite his staunch opposition to the procedure, and his history of gaffes were raising growing doubts among his candidacy. Meanwhile, expectations were high for Warnock, a polished speaker and pastor.

That created a remarkably low bar for Walker.

He landed a few attacks on Warnock, tied the senator to then-President Joe Biden and largely avoided the sort of debilitating misstep that some supporters had feared.

Even a bizarre moment when Walker flashed an honorary law enforcement badge onstage, drawing a rebuke from the moderator, didn’t change the dynamic.

The performance didn’t produce any knockout, and Warnock more than held his own. But Walker entered the debate with expectations so low that simply avoiding a major stumble was enough for Republicans to declare the night a success.

Sometimes a candidate can break through with a devastating broadside. Sometimes just not falling apart is enough.

An altercation

This year’s debates arrive after the campaign has already produced one remarkable face-to-face encounter.

Bottoms and Jackson crossed paths in August outside the Hilton Atlanta, where Bottoms confronted the Republican over an attack involving her husband. With smartphones recording, she told Jackson: “I’m fair game. Please stay away from my family.”

Jackson, seemingly caught off guard, responded, “I hear you,” and complimented her outfit before the two parted ways.

He tried to recover the next day, sharpened his attacks on Bottoms, accusing her of trying to deflect scrutiny of her record and her husband’s travel.