Oconee County Democrats do not need to turn the county blue, Jen Jordan, a candidate for attorney general, said at last month’s party meeting. They just need to make it a little less red for the party to have success in statewide elections in November.
To that end, Jordan said, it will be helpful if the party can field candidates for the county Board of Education and the Board of Commissioners races in November, as well as to run in the county’s two state House districts and the county’s state Senate district.
The Republican Party, because of gerrymandering approved in its special session last November, likely will continue to control the state House and Senate for the remainder of the decade, Jordan said. That is why the elections for governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general and other statewide offices in November are so important, Jordan said. The good news, she said, is that “You can’t gerrymander a state.”
“After the gerrymandering that’s happened this year,” Jordan said in response to a question, “Republicans are going to probably stay in control of the House and the Senate for the next eight years minimum. That is why it is so important that we focus on these statewide races so that there can be someone calling them out, because you can’t gerrymander a state. We can win, but we’ve got to work at it.”
“We are a very, very, very red county,” said Courtney Davis, who is working on candidate recruitment for the Oconee County Democratic Party. “We struggle to find local Democrats to run. But if running local Democrats is helpful to up-ticket candidates like yourself, we can do that. So I’m curious about that. You always hear about down ticket voting. But is there like an up-ticket advantage, that is, running local candidates for you?”
There is, Jordan said. “I like to say it’s down ballot, it’s up ballot. It’s all around the ballot. So at the end of the day, there are going to be people in your local communities who get out for local candidates,” she said. “And I like to say, it is about losing less. That’s all we need. We just need to lose [by] less in the dark red areas of this state.”
If knowing of an advantage for statewide races “can be a motivating force, it might help me,” Davis said. “It is hard to recruit candidates out here knowing they are going to get beat.”
For more on Jordan and Democratic candidate for agriculture commissioner Fred Swann, visit Oconee County Observations.
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