The week before the Georgia Republican Party suffered the worst electoral loss in its history, one of the key figures in the party’s evolution over the past four decades was sentenced to 15 years in federal prison for operating a massive Ponzi scheme.
We don’t have to resume that old argument about whether there are really any coincidences in politics. Suffice it to say these events mark, in a decisive way, the end of one era and the beginning of another for the party.
You might get the idea, watching candidates face off against each other in campaign debates, that besides disagreeing about the issues, the two parties are roughly similar to each other. This isn’t true, especially in states like Georgia, where Republicans were shut out of control of state government until 2003.
Many Democrats have passionate political beliefs, but they don’t go to party breakfasts on Saturday mornings to argue with each other about them. Some Republicans do. For a long time before they gained control of anything, that was a primary reason the party existed.
One thing Georgia Republicans have argued about for decades is Brant Frost. He was a leader of the party’s religious right going all the way back to 1988, when he ran Pat Robertson’s primary challenge to President George H.W. Bush in the state. Even then, there were whispers about his business dealings which were said to have prevented him from running for party chair.
In the years afterwards, Frost built his business, First Liberty Building & Loan, with a heavy emphasis on its religious and political ties, and played an active hand in politics through the Georgia Republican Assembly PAC — not to be confused with the Georgia Republican Assembly, which has ended its legal connection to the PAC.
At the same time religious conservative investors across several states were being duped out of their life savings, Frost’s PAC was contributing to conservative politicians, leading to a flurry of calls to give the money back when the Frost empire came crashing down last year. Some Republicans who received money have done so.
Frost pleaded guilty to mail fraud charges, and his conviction gives Georgia Republicans the chance to put a painful episode behind them and argue about something else, like last week’s elections.
Shocking as it was to loose every statewide elected office and the state House majority after more than two decades in control of the Golden Dome, the results could have been worse. North Carolina redrew its congressional map as President Donald Trump directed and Republicans lost four of its congressional seats. Georgia Republicans didn’t go along with the White House plan, and didn’t loose any seats.
One particular Georgia Republican escaped this year without major damage. Gov. Brian Kemp will be leaving office with a huge war chest and the distinction of being one of the few leaders in his party to clash with Trump and survive the experience. The governor and his party have not been exactly close, to say the least, but what he decides to do next has a major bearing on the future of the state party.
The election in Georgia was part of a national rejection of the administration’s policies and behavior, but it also reflected the state’s rapidly changing demographics.
In 2022, Herschel Walker came within 40,000 votes of defeating Raphael Warnock in the U.S. Senate race and Kemp defeated Stacy Abrams more handily than he had four years before. In the race for lieutenant governor, Burt Jones, whose ambitions would later crash on the rocks of Rick Jackson’s fortune, beat Charlie Bailey, who as chair of the state Democratic Party would play a key role in what happened last week.
Republicans won every statewide elected office that year, each of their candidates with a vote total of more than 2 million. This year, Democrats won every one of those offices with a total of more than 2.2 million votes each. Sen. Jon Ossoff defeated Rep. Mike Collins by more than 750,000 votes and Keisha Lance Bottoms defeated Rick Jackson with a slightly higher percentage of the vote than Kemp defeated Abrams four years before.
This dramatic turnaround can be due partly to disaffected Republicans who stayed home, but it also reflects a huge influx of new voters who Republicans will have to win over to compete in the future.
It’s very fitting that the late discovery of a memory card appears to have given Rep. Gerald Greene of Seminole County, one of the last of that generation of Democrats who switched parties when the tied turned, enough votes to become the last Republican survivor in legislative races this year.
