The Economist

(Steven Felgate) #1

28 The EconomistAugust 4th 2018


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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
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