The Economist

28 The EconomistAugust 4th 2018

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1

T

WO questions hang over this year’s

mid-term elections: how will President

Donald Trump affect Republican cam-

paigns and how should Democrats re-

spond? For an answer to the first question

look at the Republican primary for gover-

nor of Florida. Late last year Ron DeSantis

was considered a long shot. Staunchly con-

servative but little known outside his con-

gressional district he faced Adam Putnam

a fixture in Florida politics since his elec-

tion to the state legislature in 1996. Then Mr

Trump endorsed him. Now Mr DeSantis

who on July 30th released a television ad-

vertisement showing him building a wall

with his children and reading from a book

by Mr Trump enjoys first place in the polls.

At a rally on July 31st Mr Trump called him

“a tough brilliant cookie”.

The governor’s race in Georgia has

been Trumped too. Brian Kemp whose

campaign advertisements featured him

threatening a teenage boy with a shotgun

and boasting of his “big truck in case I

need to round up criminal illegals and take

’em home myself” came second in the first

round of the Republican primary after Ca-

sey Cagle the current lieutenant-governor.

After the president endorsed him though

Mr Kemp won the run-off election.

In the general election he faces Stacey

Abrams who would be the first black

woman ever elected governor in America.

ing-age population but just over half its

registered voters. Ms Abrams claims to

have registered over 200000 voters in the

past five years though some doubt that.

She has certainly travelled widely and

invested heavily in field offices and perso-

nal appearances especially in places

where Democrats seldom go. She has also

cultivated her national profile. One party

activist says that the two approaches rein-

force each other. Rural voters want to meet

the woman they see on TVshows like the

one presented by Rachel Maddow a left-

winger. Ms Abrams is unlikely to win huge

numbers of rural votes. But argues Al Wil-

liams who represents a rural district in

Georgia “she’ll run as good as any Demo-

crat in conservative areas and better than

any in more diverse communities.”

The Republican Governors’ Associa-

tion has begun running advertisements

calling Ms Abrams “too liberal for Geor-

gia”. In fact while she was in the legisla-

ture her centrism irked some Democratic

colleagues. She is running on a standard

set of Democratic concerns: public educa-

tion Medicaid expansion and economic

development—helped in the last case by

Mr Kemp’s Trumpian rhetoric. During the

primary campaign he backed a measure to

withdraw a tax break from Delta an airline

that is a big local employer to punish it for

ending a discount for members of the Na-

tional Rifle Association. He has since en-

dorsed a move to suspend collecting taxes

on jet fuel. Georgia’s many large firms

might prefer a steadier hand.

Ms Abrams is in effect building an

Obama coalition of non-white young and

white progressive voters which Demo-

crats have seldom tried in conservative

and swing states. Rather than appealing to

swing voters and hoping the Democratic

She is fighting uphill. Not since 1998 has

Georgia elected a Democratic governor

and Democrats hold no statewide office.

But Mr Trump won the rapidly diversifying

state by only five points and Ms Abrams is

a strong candidate. She is detail-driven and

policy-fluent with a (Bill) Clintonian gift

for retail politics. And she is running a dif-

ferent sort of race—one that seeks to an-

swer the second question about how

Democrats should respond to Mr Trump.

For years explains Bee Nguyen a mem-

ber of the Georgia House Democrats have

believed that “if we ran a more moderate

campaign with a moderate policy plat-

form...we can flip enough moderate Re-

publicans” to win. They have mostly court-

ed white suburbanites relying on

non-white voters to join them. That ap-

proach has failed. In 2016 Jim Barksdale

lost a Senate election by over 14 points. In

2014 two scions of Georgia’s political fam-

ilies Michelle Nunn and Jason Carter

(grandson of President Jimmy) lost Senate

and governor’s races.

By contrast Ms Abrams is trying to ex-

pand the electorate. In 2013 she founded

the New Georgia Project which aims to

register hundreds of thousands of new vot-

ers. The project says that the people it calls

“the new American majority”—non-

whites unmarried women and 18- to 29-

year-olds—comprise 62% of Georgia’s vot-

The Democrats

Splitting the difference

HINESVILLE

Stacey Abrams does not just want to govern Georgia. She also wants to change how

Democrats campaign in the age of Trump

United States

Also in this section

29 The politics of climate change

30 Dancing horses in Illinois

30 Amazing GDP figures

31 Throwing money at defence

32 Lexington: Trump takes on

Afghanistan