Georgia is the Early Voting State for the 2024 Presidential Nominating Calendar: A Puzzle for the Causal Politics of a Republican-controlled State
ATLANTA — When a panel inside the Democratic National Committee voted two weeks ago to revamp the party’s presidential primary calendar, that was the easy part.
Biden has proposed a drastic shakeup of the 2024 presidential nominating calendar that would add Georgia as an early nominating state. South Carolina would be the first state to hold a primary, followed by New Hampshire and Nevada a few days later, and then Georgia and Michigan before Super Tuesday. The traditional state order of Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina has already been locked in by the Republicans.
And in Georgia, which would go fourth in the lineup, the ultimate decider of the state’s primary date is a Republican who says for now his hands are tied.
“If the election day for Georgia is sooner, we will do nothing that will hurt or violate the rules of either of the parties,” said Gabriel Sterling, chief operating officer in the Georgia secretary of state’s office.
Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger is a Republican who is part of a Republican-controlled state government that works with a Republican-controlled legislature. But Sterling says his boss keeping the status quo isn’t partisan. He said it is about following the rules of the parties, and protecting election workers.
The Battleground State of Georgia: The Case for an Early Primary State and a Center for the Voices of the Georgians in 2024
“We’re not going to have two different primaries because that’s a lot of stress and strain on poll workers and counties,” Sterling said. We will have a March primary because we’re going to have only one presidential preference day and whichever party has the most rules around that will stick with it.
The professor of political science at a school in Atlanta says that a shift in the nominating calendar is good for those who end up earlier than everyone else.
The shakeup that we’re seeing has consequences, he said. “It really kind of disturbs the order that both parties really relied upon, and it provides a set of incentives for these early states to get a lot more media attention.”
Fraga says Georgia becoming an earlier state would bring increased investment of political and financial capital in a state that’s no stranger to electoral attention, not to mention more press attention and heightened profiles for surrogates who live in the state and Democratic lawmakers.
“I like to say we’re the center of the political universe, and that is not going to change this cycle or next cycle,” said Georgia U.S. Rep. Nikema Williams, chair of the state Democratic Party. “This is going to continue for years to come, and the fact that we’re being prioritized, that speaks volumes for both Democrats and Republicans.”
On the heels of Joe Biden’s 2020 victory in Georgia by about 12,000 votes, the Democratic party is working to make Georgia an early primary state in 2024. Atlanta is also a finalist to host the next Democratic National Convention. Georgia’s place in the country’s premier battleground states has been solidified by the results of the second-round election.
And after the 2022 midterms saw Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican Gov. Brian Kemp both win on the strength of split-ticket voters, its battleground status has been elevated to new heights ahead of 2024.
“If you look at the past couple of cycles in Georgia, they were elevated to be a premier battleground state in this country, and battleground states worked for both Democrats and Republicans because we have to make our case to the voters,” she said. The goal is to show that we are worth investment from all sides, and to center the voices of Georgians.
Fraga said Georgia Republicans might not see how moving the Democratic primary earlier adds up for them, but there is a case to be made for the GOP to also benefit from a more prominent slot to shape their messaging.
There’s still plenty of time for changes in rules and changes of heart in settling the primary pecking order, and in Georgia Raffensperger doesn’t have to set a date until next fall.
Rebecca DeHart is the executive director of the Democratic Party of Georgia. How many more cycles do we have to win in order to prove it?
She doesn’t look at Georgia’s politics in shades of blue, red and purple. Instead, she looks at the roughly 1.6 million new registered voters since 2018, many of them voters of color.
The Republicans control the state government in Georgia. Herschel Walker lost the U.S. Senate election by less than 3 points despite flaws as a candidate, including allegations of domestic abuse, a propensity for making false claims and his loose grasp of policy.
“We need to be cautious about looking at behavior in this runoff election and trying to extrapolate other things from it, in part because Herschel Walker was such a unique candidate,” Gillespie says.
The campaign was credited with exploiting the dynamic by courting independent and moderate Republican voters with a message about bipartisanship and competence.
Two years ago, Democrats eked out wins in another unique environment. Back then, Donald Trump was a prominent factor, repelling many swing voters with false claims about election fraud.
“One of my friends used to say, ‘If ifs and buts were figs or nuts, we’d all have a merry Christmas,” says Republican strategist Cody Hall, standing near the towering Christmas tree in the state capitol’s rotunda. “They’ve been winning, regardless of whether it’s a specific circumstance or not.”
Hall says we have to get out of the mindset that it is 2010 and a candidate can win with only an R next to their name. “If you nominate the wrong candidates, if you don’t have the right message and you don’t raise the money, you will lose.”
Years of organizing irregular and nonvoters helped catalyze that shift. Those efforts accelerated with Abrams’ 2018 bid for governor, who was the first major candidate in Georgia to center that outreach in a statewide campaign.
Helen Butler is executive director of the nonpartisan Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda, which has been working to register and engage voters since the nineties.
“I know there are a lot of people of color who we registered to vote who didn’t show up to the polls,” Butler says. “So my interest is getting those people to make that next step.”
The DNC Convention Center, Atlanta, is in the running for the convention, a source familiar with the DNC and the early history of the civil rights movement
Atlanta is in the running to host the convention along with New York City and Chicago according to a source familiar with the situation. The timing of the letter, which was sent to Biden and DNC chair Jaime Harrison, was strategic. It was sent days ahead of the DNC’s winter meeting so it would be front of mind for members and discussed at the Philadelphia gathering later this week, the source said.
More than 65 current and former Democratic US senators, members of the US House, governors, mayors and local leaders from Southern states signed a letter, which was obtained by CNN. Notable names include Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, Sens. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff of Georgia, Sens. Tim Kaine and Mark Warner of Virginia, and DNC senior adviser and former senior adviser to the president Cedric Richmond, among many others.
Ossoff and Warnock both won runoffs in January 2021, giving Democrats Senate control after Biden won the state in the 2020 election. Warnock helped Democrats maintain their majority by winning a full six-year term last year.
The letter argues that Atlanta should be chosen for its role as the cradle of America’s civil rights movement and its support of LGBTQUIA+ rights.