Georgia's Very Own Megathread!

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I'm encouraged that most of Evans' endorsements are from local politicians while Abrams' only has the endorsements of the Georgia Democrats in Congress and outside interest groups. I was pleased to see a group of a dozen black legislators come out and endorse Evans. I was worried that the primary would be racialized which would hurt Evans, but it looks like those involved in local politics understand that Abrams is unelectable.

Doesn’t look too great that Jimmy Carter also walked back what seemed like an endorsement.

Of Abrams?

Yeah. He introduced her somewhere as something to the effect of “hopefully the next governor of GA”. IIRC the next day,  his office put out a statement saying that he hadn’t made up his mind and will support whoever gets the nom.

Yikes!

This race will certainly be interesting as it unfolds. I was done with Abrams after she refused to condemn the protesters who shouted down at Evans at the Netroots Conference holding up signs inferring she didn't support black women and compared her to Betsy Devos. When asked why they didn't like Evans they couldn't name one vote, policy decision, or otherwise. Disgusting.

I feel the same way; it'll be an interesting one to watch. I'm all in for Evans right now, and it's certainly encouraging that she's gotten the support of so many locals. She seems to have her priorities in order- I like that she's making education reform the important topic that it should be and keeping to economic issues.

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http://www.cosmopolitan.com/politics/a13761355/stacey-abrams-georgia-governor-candidate-interview/

"If all goes as planned, the earliest Stacey Abrams would run for president is in 2028. Not 2020 — that’s too soon. Not 2024 — the Democrat who vanquishes President Trump in 2020 will be up for re-election. No, the first opportunity is 2028. That’s her year."


Yikes

Well, at least she's honest, I guess.
This article perfectly sums up a lot of what's wrong with Stacey Abrams as a candidate. Her ambition and lack of commitment to Georgia voters are clear as day, and I think she'll be absolutely obliterated if she makes it through the primary.

Cagle seems to be a fairly average, non-controversial candidate when compared to the crazies running against him (unless you live in Decatur). Abrams is not a fairly average, non-controversial candidate by any means, and being set apart by supporting BDS, the Netroots fiasco, wanting to run for President as soon as humanly possible, running a campaign on demographics, and wanting to tear down Stone Mountain is not a net positive.

I can only hope that Evans wins the primary; she at least would have a chance against Cagle, however small it may be. I'll be strongly supporting her campaign.

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I personally support Norwood. There are many things I don't like about her, and she was in my bottom tier of candidates during the first round (My first choice was Peter Aman. I also liked Cathy Woolard and Vincent Fort). However, I highly disapprove of Kasim Reed and his rampant corruption, and I think that Keisha Lance Bottoms hasn't done anything to show that she wouldn't be anything except for a third term of Reed.

I honestly won't be too happy no matter what the result is, but I'll be a lot less happy if Bottoms wins. She represents to me everything that's wrong with Atlanta politics today.

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Here is a live precinct map of the mayoral election:
https://www.wabe.org/runoff-election-map/

Currently, Norwood leads 63-37%, with 0.2% of the vote reporting. It's going to be a long night! As of right now, only precincts that voted for Woolard (along with one R1 Bottoms precinct) have reported any results. Norwood currently leads in every Woolard precinct, while Bottoms leads in the R1 Bottoms precinct.

Results for the elections can also be found here, via the Secretary of State's office:
http://results.enr.clarityelections.com/GA/72213/Web02-state/#/

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Mary Norwood going up, now at 51.7% to Bottoms' 48.2%. I'm hoping she can pull out a victory, although I would say that Bottoms is favored at this point for reasons already stated here.

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Looks like it’ll be a tight one but Bottoms pulls it out. Glad to see Jen Jordan up as much as she is too.

Agreed. I do not want homophobic Jaha Howard to be my State Senator. Fortunately, it looks like Buckhead is going to pull Jordan over the finish line.

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I advise everyone to listen to this clip of Norwood. https://twitter.com/IsaacHayes3/status/936703133333549062

I have heard the clip many times, and, to be honest, it doesn't matter at all to me. Yes, Norwood is almost certainly a Republican, albeit a liberal Republican, who actually has a more progressive voting record on the Atlanta City Council than Keisha Lance Bottoms does. However, when it comes to local politics, pragmatism and integrity should ideally be much more important than partisanship, and to vote for a candidate because they're a partisan Democrat is no better than someone voting for Trump or Moore because of the (R)s beside their names. (And no, I'm not trying to compare Bottoms to Trump or Moore. That would be ridiculous.)

Yes, there are many problems with both Mary Norwood and Keisha Lance Bottoms. Although, to me, Bottoms' corruption is a much heavier weight than Norwood's issues, I can easily see how one would feel the opposite way. However, injecting partisan politics into what's supposed to be a nonpartisan election focused on solving real, local issues is a bit silly, and it promotes a political environment that I just can't go along with.

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Well, congratulations to all the Bottoms supporters on here. She obviously wasn't my preferred candidate, but I guess I'd better start getting used to her!

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Officially broke the senate super majority tonight!!!

Yup. I'm pretty excited that my Senate district was the one to do it, and without electing a homophobe at that!

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After a lot of thinking and despite my previous criticisms, I have decided to rescind my support of Stacey Evans, and am now backing Stacey Abrams to become the Democratic nominee for Governor. Not that my endorsement will make or break either candidate just wanted to give some warning before you start seeing pro-Abrams posts from me.

Why did you change your endorsement? I'm curious to hear your reasoning.

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Man whoever the D is in 2020 is gonna have a field day running against Perdue.

Perdue strikes me as such a weak incumbent. He has a long history of saying and doing things that are just attack ad bait. Combined with the strong Democratic bench in the state, I'm hoping that I can help vote in a Democratic Georgia Senator come 2020.

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Kasim Reed has received a federal subpoena regarding his rampant corruption at Atlanta City Hall.

https://www.ajc.com/news/local-govt--politics/former-mayor-kasim-reed-named-atlanta-city-hall-corruption-subpoena/hwt9uxArcR4cdzLtySbMUI/

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This is great news! Hopefully Reed, who was an awful mayor, won't ever get the chance to be an awful representative for the state at a larger scale.

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How is Brian Kemp a real person

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Q1cfjh6VfE

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Since the DAMN SOS doesn't have one statewide absentee file available for 2014 and since I can't find anything to properly merge 159 spreadsheets, I haven't went through the data between the two cycles to compare statewide.

But...here's a teaser in early votes:

2014-Gwinnett
Total Votes: 8019

Ballot	Votes	%
GOP	5432	67.7
DEM	1983	24.8
NP	604	7.5

2018-Gwinnett
Total Votes: 16538

Ballot	Votes	%
DEM	9281	56.1
GOP	6585	39.8
NP	672	4.1

Wow. I knew the ATL metro was trending Democratic fast, but that's insane. It also reinforces my opinion that GA-7 would flip before GA-6; Rob Woodall should be getting worried.

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Is there a county map for the Democratic SoS primary?

http://results.enr.clarityelections.com/GA/74658/Web02-state.202568/#/cid/22020

Barrow won every county except for Newton and Rockdale.

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Kemp up 44/41 in the latest AJC poll.

I'll be very surprised if Cagle wins; then again, I predicted Kemp would win the runoff from the very beginning. Every move Cagle has been making reeks of desperation thanks to his scandals and lack of enthusiasm on the ground.

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Just checked the results and LMFAO. Cagle spent how long preparing for this; fifteen years? All for 30% of the vote statewide and a potential loss in his own hometown. Humiliating.

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LMAO that "SHADY DAVID SHAFER" meme really worked:

CANDIDATE   VOTE   PCT.   
Geoff Duncan   278,750   50.1%   
David Shafer   277,110   49.9   

I HATE David Shafer! This warms my heart.

Has this race been moved from Likely to Lean Republican yet?

Why? I'm just curious.. Don't know much about either..

Slimy and corrupt, had his friends make some accusations of sexual harassing a lobbyist "go away" right before the election, and thought he was owed the seat. It's obnoxious when any politician thinks they deserve a seat due to whatever crap he or she has carried out for businesses and other politicians.

The first Abrams and Kemp attacks are in. I saw the Abrams commercial a couple of times this morning getting ready for work.

That quick? wow.

Abrams ad 7/10. Very good, but not great. The ad uses Kemp's own ads against him,which is genious, and some of those still shots are hilarious. But the ad fails to really grab viewer, and the news cycle at the beginning would have been better suited at the end.

Kemp ad 3/10 Its a typical scary ad, and poor at that. The focus on Hillary is actually bad considering this is one of the few states that trended D when the whole nation trended R. They seem to not use anything else other than she is a Radical D who will raise taxes, and is funded by Nancy Pelosi, like I havent heard that before. Not creative, and rather poor.(of course this ad was made by the RNC.)

The entire GOP strategy lately seems like nothing but telling people who blindly vote for them to start with whatever they want to hear to get them to turn out rather than putting even the tiniest effort into winning swing votes.

To be fair, I don't think Brian Kemp is winning any swing votes either way.