GOP places focus anywhere but Atlanta in Georgia runoffs
ATLANTA – Vice President Mike Pence is seemingly holding rallies everywhere in Georgia lately — except Atlanta and its inner suburbs. Pence returned Thursday for events in Columbus, on the state's western edge, and Macon, in middle Georgia, to support Republican Sens. President Donald Trump rounded out the map with a Dec. 5 rally in Valdosta, in south Georgia. “The fact is they’re going to places where Republicans have the best margins, trying to energize their voters," said Brian Robinson, a GOP strategist in Georgia. In November, Perdue pushed his margins across many of the north Georgia counties to 80%.
Stacey Abrams credited for boosting Democrats in Georgia
Abrams, the onetime candidate for Georgia governor who has become perhaps the nation's leading voice on voting rights, is being credited for paving those inroads. “There’s a lot of work that’s gone into this, but Stacey really is the architect of what’s been built in Georgia,” said Dubose Porter, the former Georgia Democratic Party chairman and an Abrams mentor. The 2018 campaign marked a notable shift in Georgia Democrats’ overall approach. They’d do it by reshaping the electorate, by exciting the expanding universe of potentially Democratic voters: the youngest native white Georgians; whites from beyond Georgia; Black voters who cast ballots sporadically; Black voters moving to Georgia from other regions; and a growing Latino and Asian-American population. “We’ll take on Antifa, Black Lives Matter, Fair Fight, Stacey Abrams and all of them.”Trump himself was an accelerating variable in Georgia’s shift, pushing some white suburbanites toward Democrats.