Dr. Charles Bullock writes: "A Tough Challenge For Jane Kidd - - No Kidding"

Dr. Charles S. Bullock III, a Richard B. Russell Professor of Political Science and Josiah Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Georgia, writes in InsiderAdvantage Georgia:

In what may be the first step in the continuing transformation of Georgia’s political landscape, the Democratic Party elected a new chair during the last weekend of January. A political party holding an election may not sound newsworthy but it was a new experience for the state’s once dominant institution. During the decades of Democratic hegemony the governor handpicked party leaders. But with Democrats embarking on their fifth year without control of the governorship, the traditional selection process is no longer available.

The selection of a woman, Athens’ former state representative Jane Kidd, was not unique since a woman had led the party a generation ago. The challenge confronted by the daughter of former Governor Ernest Vandiver, however, is unprecedented.

Over the last 15 years, Democrats have seen Republicans go from holding no statewide offices to winning 12 of the 15 elected on a partisan ballot. During this same period Republicans increased their share of the congressional delegation from one to seven. In winning majorities in the General Assembly, Republicans trebled their share of the seats.

At the top of Kidd’s “to-do” list is: take steps to halt the downward slide. Next: get Democrats on the road to recovery. Achieving these objectives will require candidates, voters and money.

As she ponders how to meet the challenges, Kidd might review the steps Republicans took that got them from irrelevance to dominance. The potential significance of the GOP model is underscored since the Democratic Party today finds itself in much the situation occupied by the GOP in the not-so-distant past. Consider these facts. In 1997 Republicans had 74 seats in the state House and 22 in the Senate. Today Democrats have 74 House seats and 22 Senate seats. The 1992 exit polls showed a Georgia electorate that was 42 percent Democratic and 34 percent Republican. In 2004, 42 percent of Georgia voters were Republicans and 34 percent Democrats. Last November those who went to the polls were 44 percent Republican and 32 percent Democratic.

If Kidd follows the Republican model, she will begin a program to identify prospective candidates in deference to that old political aphorism: you can’t beat somebody with nobody. Historically Democrats did not need to worry about candidate recruitment since when Democrats controlled Georgia government the best of the politically ambitious automatically gravitated to the majority party.

Almost two decades ago Republicans, frustrated by their inability to translate success in presidential elections into congressional and state legislative seats developed an effective approach to candidate recruitment. First they identified districts that looked promising for their party. Then the state party turned to local activists for help in finding attractive potential candidates. Since some of the prospects lacked experience on the campaign trail and hesitated to explore such uncharted territory, the party offered advice and assistance. By concentrating resources on attractive candidates in winnable districts the GOP gradually chipped away at the Democratic majority in the legislature. In time, some of the Republicans in the General Assembly ran for Congress or statewide posts.

Get-out-the-vote, or GOTV, is a second area in which Democrats might study the GOP playbook. The “72-hour campaign” has proven more effective in getting Republican voters to the polls than Democratic GOTV efforts. Republicans have become adept at identifying voters likely to support their candidates, putting relevant materials into the hands of these voters, and then getting these voters to turn out whether it be by casting absentee ballots, voting early, or going to the polls on election day. Volunteers, who are often more faithful and diligent than paid workers, have largely fueled the Republican effort.

The Democrats new leadership team represents components needed to fashion a majority. The new number 2, Michael Thurmond, is an African American and the black vote is the party’s core constituency.

By selecting a white woman to lead the party, Democrats put at the helm a representative of the key swing group in Georgia politics. When Democrats won statewide contests in the 1990s, white males gave significantly larger shares of their votes to the GOP than did white women. Women continue to display more loyalty to the Democrats making up almost 58 percent of those asking for Democratic ballots in the 2006 primary but only 48 percent of the Republican primary voters. However in recent general elections, white women have given the same levels of support as white men to the re-elections of George Bush and Sonny Perdue.

A Democratic comeback in statewide elections will require both mobilization of African Americans and greater support from women who cast a majority of the vote in general elections. (Of course getting more white male votes would also help the Democrats but that may be more difficult.) The challenge to the Kidd – Thurmond duo will be to recruit candidates and design appeals that overcome the deficit that their party has encountered in the elections of this new century.

The trends do not favor Democrats. In 2002 when the GOP surged into the majority, it won the top-of-the-ticket positions of governor and U.S. senator by more than 100,000 votes. Two years later, when for the first time Georgia voted Republican for both president and U.S. Senator in the same election, both won by more than 500,000 votes. In 2006, with turnout down again, as is the pattern for mid-term elections, Republicans made their two most significant gains, winning the offices of lieutenant governor and secretary of state by about 250,000 votes.

One lesson derived from these figures is that the GOP showing of 2002 was not a fluke.

A second conclusion is that a number of voters who remained loyal to the Democratic Party in the 1990s are now regularly selecting Republicans. The longer these voters continue that behavior, the harder it will be for Democrats to win them back. What may have been an exception in voting against Roy Barnes and Max Cleland is hardening into a more generalized preference for Republicans with each passing election.

In thinking about the challenge to Kidd and Thurmond, the words of Jerry Reed come to mind. He sang about having “a long way to go and a short time to get there.”