When 3-to-1 is challenged, what about the close races?

By Tom Baxter

Last week, as 2,189 candidates were qualifying to run for office this year, there was an ominous reminder that going forward, election results in Georgia may never be as cut and dried as they used to be.

By a majority of 73 percent, voters in Camden County rejected plans to build a commercial spaceport in which the county has already invested more than $10 million. The turnout was 17 percent, which is low but not out of line with a lot of local special elections. Local residents succeeded in getting a vote on the question after a petition drive in which they gathered some 3,500 signatures. The county commission is challenging their right to hold the referendum in a court suit.

Here’s the ominous part: Instead of accepting the landslide vote as the end of the line for this long-debated project, the county commission filed an emergency motion to block certification of the results until its lawsuit is settled.

It’s not such a surprise the county would do this. Both sides are heavily dug in on this issue, enough to exhaust every possible legal remedy. The Georgia Supreme Court quickly denied the motion, while allowing the lawsuit challenging the referendum to proceed.

Still, the refusal to accept even this clear a demonstration of the voters’ will makes you wonder what’s going to happen in upcoming elections when the outcomes are much closer, and local election boards in many parts of the state aren’t as nonpartisan as they were before the 2020 election. There is a growing tendency not to accept the results of elections, even when the margin is 3-to-1.

This doesn’t seem to have dissuaded people from running for office, however. Of the candidates who qualified last week, 996 are Republicans, 597 are Democrats, five are independents and four are Libertarians. The remaining 587 candidates are running in non-partisan races.

These totals might lead you to think that Republicans are either more numerous or more fractious than they really are. Every small rural county controlled by Republicans has roughly as many local offices as a large urban Democratic county, so there are a lot more Republicans in these local races, unchallenged by Democrats.

And while former President Donald Trump’s beef with Gov. Brian Kemp has generated challenge races down to the level of insurance commissioner, overall Republicans don’t seem more likely to do battle with each other in primaries than do Democrats. For instance, there are four candidates running for lieutenant governor as Republicans, and nine running as Democrats.

It’s noteworthy that this is the highest office for which a Libertarian is also running. The presence of Libertarian candidates on the ballot caused runoffs for the U.S. Senate in 1992, 2008 and 2020, but that won’t happen this year.

The races for state legislative seats probably give us the best indication of the balance between the parties and their relative fractiousness. Overall, 257 Republicans are running for the House or Senate, compared to 241 Democrats. In 42 races, Republicans don’t have Democratic challengers; in 28 races, Democrats don’t have Republican opposition. House District 28 in northeast Georgia has the most Republicans vying for office — six, with one Democratic candidate. House District 90 in DeKalb County has the most Democrats — five, with one Republican.

For all their partisan differences, the Democratic and Republican legislative candidates are very similar in many respects. The average age of the Republican candidates is 53. For Democrats, it’s 51.

The Democrats have 22 candidates who list themselves as attorneys or lawyers and 18 retirees; the Republicans have 21 retirees and 21 attorneys. It’s hard to sort out candidates who are business people because they have different ways of identifying themselves. Republicans have the edge in this category, but not by as much as you’d think. Interestingly, the five candidates who list themselves as entrepreneurs are all Democrats, while the two candidates who list themselves as CEOs are Republicans.

Four Republicans and three Democrats list themselves as retired military. The only chef candidate is a Democrat; the only chiropractor, a Republican. All in all, the candidates are a pretty wide reflection of what Georgians do for a living. Of course, the winning candidates may be a different story.

Thanks to Maggie Lee for her able data crunching.