2022 Election Postmortem: Rural Scrooge
Ted Sadler, Project Logic Ga | Southern Moderate African American Issues
Summary: While fresh on my mind, I write this unvarnished personal analysis of the 2020 election year with an eye on the past, present and future like Scrooge. Hopefully, this self-deprecating effort will be helpful and explain what should happen next.
Past
* Rural Georgia South of Macon (the 1st, 2nd and 8th Congressional Districts) are ignored or tolerated by Metro Atlanta’s Democrats.
* Rise of Tea Party/Trump MAGA Movement – No place for Moderates (Ugly Tone and Neo Confederates)
* Rise of Progressive Movement impacts Blue Dog Democrats/Rural Black Moderates
-Weak Rural Democrat leadership, bench or farm system
* Rural Bloggers and Moderate Grassroots consultants crafted an approach over the last 20 years different than the national or state party agendas.
-Projectlogicga.com’s Best Interests Initiative and P.E.C.S.
* O.P.E.N. 2020 Network: is a project that I designed that never was funded. The plan was to cultivate 20 non-traditional influencers in 20 cities over time; building relationships before election seasons with local leaders who had preexisting community trust. Also, we don’t need to proverbially preach to the choir. Reaching non and infrequent voters with real issues was the objective.
Present
* Democrat Party of Georgia treats some rural voters with distain and confusion; looking for “Atlanta type” locals rather than acknowledging our uniqueness and culture. (Both major parties seem less powerful than political groups controlled by Ms. Stacey Abrams and former President Donald Trump. President Barrack Obama’s Organizing for America had more power than the D.N.C. at one point.
-Rural Moderates: near the center, refute the Far Right claims that all Democrats are liberal.
* Candidate Selection: Traditionally, south Georgia has one of the big three statewide candidates: Governor, Lt Governor, or Secretary of State. Naturally, the Agriculture Commissioner should be from a rural area to balance the campaign effort for the ticket. I was wrong to not push harder for LeMario Brown of Fort Valley or Winfred Dukes for Agriculture Commissioner. Not having a south Georgian at this position on the statewide ticket might have cost us 250,000 votes.
* Down Ballot Candidates: While down ballot candidates clearly benefited from Abrams and Warnock, congressional and state legislative candidates in areas with better funding could have generated an additional 200k votes. Those candidates in turn would have served as regional leaders for the ticket.
* Cliff Albright: said that success in part comes from finding proven local networks and entities and supporting them with funding. After the Warnock/Ossoff Runoff two years ago, some groups departed from this strategy and locals felt surprised.
* Campaign and PAC spending: my community thinks too much money was spent on negative advertising (T.V., radio, online, and mailers) in a lazy way. 20% of that money funding local events would have increased turn out by 20%. Door knocking and phone banking does work but the people need to be local.
* Georgia Honors PAC: spent over 30 million dollars attacking Herschel Walker’s character and to some rural people, that effort seemed desperate. Also, there are no indications than anyone with this PAC is in or from Georgia. 20% of that money should have been focused on Walker’s inability to grasp government issues. Did this group have a grassroots action component at all?
* Locals to Locals: Local people respond better to campaign people from their area. While Harvard, Yale, Sanford, Duke and even Morehouse and Spelman are top colleges, our regional colleges like Albany State, Fort Valley State, Savannah State, Valdosta State, Georgia Southern, ABAC and Georgia Southwestern run south Georgia and their graduates have an organic network from home and professional life.
* Millions and Volunteers: With online information, grassroots people in rural areas resent calls to “volunteer” from entities with huge budgets. Of course, the real benefit of electing the right candidate comes from better public policy but the public only learns that from voter education.
* South Georgia: should function like it’s own political unit.
Future
* Scales: South Georgia can tip the scales in any statewide election and therefore Moderate Democrats are susceptible to GOP money if the Republicans purge the Far Right (exodus to a Trump third party) and a less crazy Moderate suburban segment emerges.
* Head of the Snake/Locomotive: Rural Moderate Democrats are often community leaders. If the most centrist 20% depart for the GOP or considered themselves “Unaffiliated,” future Get Out the Vote would be difficult. Black Moderates can’t be taken for granted by anyone.
* Ossoff: Senator Ossoff will feel the effects of 2022 Abrams/Warnock. While victory is wonderful in this runoff, a “normal” Republican candidate would have won. Brian Kemp, Brad Raffensperger and Geoff Duncan loom so the next U.S. Senate race in Georgia starts now with studying Warnock/Walker. Keisha Lance Bottoms would charm rural Georgia if she was on a statewide ballot for governor.
* Campaign Cottage Industry: Campaigns and PAC efforts are lucrative and constantly ongoing.
* Straight hard talk to infrequent voters and non-voters.
* Recommendations: Ongoing Citizens voter education projects with depth and complexities regarding kitchen table issues, the political process and agenda development. Toward that end, I think several of my blog projects from the past could be useful and lucrative.
Cross Generational Big Issues | Project Logic Ga
OPEN20/20 Network | a grassroots policy consortium (wordpress.com)
Best Interests Initiative | Project Logic Ga
Southern Black Muscle: P.E.C.S. | Project Logic Ga
Summary: Moderate Blacks are the Democrats base in rural areas. If we are taken for granted, the party can’t win in the South.
Project Logic Ga 
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