The votes are now counted for Georgia’s May 18^th partisan primaries as well as for the non-partisan judicial elections – even in Fulton County.  Democrats are settled in at the top of the ticket for November, with former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms getting a majority of votes for Governor in a crowded field, while U.S. Senator Jon Ossoff was unopposed for the nomination.

Republicans will have four more weeks of trying to get on the same page, with statewide runoffs not only for those two positions, but also for Lieutenant Governor, Secretary of State, and State School Superintendent. Superintendent Richard Woods is the only statewide incumbent who faced a primary challenge and failed to score the support of a majority of Republican voters in a five person contest. Woods will face Bubba Longgrear in June to determine who runs Georgia’s Department of Education.

Democrats, meanwhile, will spend the next month choosing candidates at the state level to add to their wins in recent Public Service Commission special elections. They will have runoff elections to choose their nominees for Lieutenant Governor, Secretary of State, Commissioner of Insurance, and Commissioner of Labor.

Every election is unique, but those who work in the campaign and/or government affairs realms tend to rely on some truisms when trying to figure out what will work for a candidate, and how they assemble a coalition of a majority of votes. These results show that in some ways, time and this state itself are changing.

We’ll start by looking at the Democratic Primary for Governor, and the candidacy of Michael Thurmond. Thurmond, as Labor Commissioner, was one of the last Democrats to hold statewide office before Republicans took firm control of the state for a couple of decades. He spent the interim time as the Chief Executive of dark blue DeKalb County and was the party’s 2010 Nominee to take on a very popular Senator Johnny Isakson. He held the endorsements from Georgia’s last Democratic Governor, Roy Barnes, as well as Ambassador Andrew Young.

Despite his extensive experience and endorsements, Thurmond finished third in his contest for Governor with 13% of the vote.  The takeaway:  This is no longer the Georgia Democratic Party that ceded power to Republicans beginning in 2002.  Their primary voters are both looking for something different, and looking to other voices and funding sources to drive voting decisions.

There’s a similar story if a bit more subtle on the Republican side. Attorney General Chris Carr is the highest profile politician from the political family tree of the late Senator Johnny Isakson. The modern Georgia Republican party was synonymous with names like Isakson, Gingrich, Coverdell, Calloway, and Irvin. While the Isakson network remains strong and powerful with alumni in many key positions in government and commerce, every election seems to remove the GOP farther and farther from both the architects and in many cases, their beliefs and policies.

The suburbanization of rural Georgia is a bit harder to quantify out of these results, but perhaps a look at the Republican contests for Governor and Lieutenant Governor demonstrates a subtle yet substantial change in how rural voters make their ballot decisions.  Senator Blake Tillery garnered the endorsement of roughly half of Georgia’s Sheriffs. Chris Carr claimed about 1/3.  Neither advanced to a runoff.

There was a time when a statewide candidate could go to almost any corner of the state, and if he could get the Sheriff along with a Commissioner, School Superintendent, and maybe a Rotary or Kiwanis Club President to support him or her, he could count on winning that county. 

Today, about a third of Georgia’s population is represented by five sheriffs in metro Atlanta’s core, and well more than half of voters are represented by just a dozen metro sheriffs.  But even in north and southeast Georgia, counties are seeing massive growth. Many new voters “aren’t from around here” and have never met the Sheriff nor any of those other folks with titles just mentioned. It’s still far better to have a Sheriff’s endorsement than not, but these endorsements alone aren’t enough anymore.

With those changes, one other truism remains the same. It is futile, almost stupidly so, to challenge an Appropriations Chairman in a Primary election. House Appropriations Chair Matt Hatchett of Dublin and Education Appropriations Subcommittee Chair Matt Dubnik of Gainesville each received primary challenges. Each sent their opponents packing with 91% and 87% of the vote, respectively. 

Voters priorities can change on a whim, but most are still aware of who delivers for their districts.  No Legislator is able to deliver more than the ones who write the checks, yet also keeps the budget balanced.