Like many cities in Georgia and throughout the country, Statesboro, Georgia held municipal elections last month. And, as is the case for many multi-candidate elections throughout the South, no candidate won a majority in the race for mayor. This set up a run-off election on this past Tuesday. The results were astounding. Follow me below the fold for an analysis of the election and what it means for Democratic possibilities in Georgia next year.
November's election for mayor was a four way race featuring the incumbent mayor, Joe Brannon, Jan Moore, a member of a prominent local family and business editor of the local newspaper, Jonathan McCollar, an African-American activist and past chair of the local Democratic party, and Bill Thomas, a well known local gadfly.
The incumbent was reportedly reluctant to run again and only agreed after urging by members of the local political elite. Jan Moore (Pitty Pat) announced in July with a newspaper story that nearly amounted to endorsements by the newspaper and the local Board of Education, where she also worked as school psychologist. She also continued to work for the paper throughout the campaign despite the obvious conflict of interest.
It was clear early on that the real contest was between Moore and McCollar. The result was a vigorous and highly visible campaign of yardsigns and extensive canvassing. Either candidate would be historic, since Statesboro had never had either a female or African-American mayor. In fact, during the general election campaign one of Moore's ads self-labeled her as "a progressive candidate." The results on election day:
Brannen 238 (20.7%)
McCollar 563 (35.5%)
Moore 630 (39.75%)
Thomas 64 (4.0%)
Thus Moore and McCollar were to have a runoff election on December 3rd. The usual results of a runoff are bad news for progressives. In most cases our constituencies are hard to turn out for general elections. Their turnout for runoffs is much worse. In fact, last year, McCollar had been a close second in a special election for city council, but was defeated by almost 2 to 1 in the runoff. Turnout was 1/3 lower than the general.
Having been bitten by the low turnout bug once, Jonathan was determined not to allow it to happen a second time. The McCollar campaign developed a multi-pronged strategy. The first was intensely personal. A core of committed volunteers was organized and pledged to each contact 25 friends to encourage them to vote in the runoff. The second was to attend African-American churches and urge their members to apply for absentee ballots. The third was to contact 2012 voters who had not voted in the General election to vote in the runoff. The strategy emphasized absentee and early voting.
Moore's strategy was media heavy including no less than five full page ads in the local paper and two campaign flyers delivered by mail to Statesboro voters. The photo below shows one of her flyers. Gone is her emphasis on her progressive values. Instead her issue is crime and "Protect our values" I, at least, took that line as a dog whistle appeal to conservative voters
The early results of Jonathan's strategy looked good. The local newspaper reported that in early voting Districts 1 & 2 (African-American majority) had produced 400 early votes, while districts 3,4, & 5 had only had 193 early voters. When I voted at 5:00 PM at the precinct for Districts 1 & 2, the poll workers told me that over 500 had voted that day. Unfortunately, the apparently promising demographics of early voting did not pan out. Moore actually won the early vote and the second precinct by large enough margins that Jonathan could not overcome with a large majority in precinct 1.
The final results:
Moore 980 (52%)
McCollar 887 (48%)
The important thing to note is that the overall vote total for the runoff was larger than the general election total. This suggests that an aggressive multi-pronged GOTV strategy before the general election could put progressive candidates over the top.