Republicans better hope that Georgians still take pride in splitting tickets

Suburban Atlanta voters love to split tickets. To moderate and independent voters, it is a self-congratulatory sign of their political independence. They’ll vote for the incumbent senator and probably vote for the businessman of the GOP for governor over the mayor who presided over Atlanta’s burning in 2020. That is the hope anyway.

Trump is popular only among Republicans

Credit: Erick Erickson

Credit: Erick Erickson

No one should be surprised by the present polling, which has a close race between Bottoms and Jackson for governor, with Bottoms slightly ahead. The GOP has not yet consolidated. There are still those licking wounds. Consolidation will happen because Democrats chose Atlanta’s former mayor.

In the GOP Senate race, Derek Dooley never really gave Collins a run for his money. There is not much consolidation to happen. There is a well-established incumbent who turns out to be a good, if slightly robotic campaigner, and a Republican opponent who can speak MAGA, but does not yet seem to understand he has to also get the votes of those who do not like MAGA but are sympathetic to Republican positions.

The wild card in all of this is the president of the United States. The president remains deeply popular with Republicans and unpopular with everyone else. The party that controls the White House tends to have poor midterm performances nationwide. The Democrats are fired up. Those who hate the president the most are most likely to vote and Democrats have swept special elections in the past year, including here in Georgia in races that should favor the Republicans.

Rick Jackson has wisely invested in a ground game to rival Gov. Brian Kemp’s machine. His campaign worked through its model in the primary and then the runoff, showing they can move voters to the polls at a time Republican voters need extra effort to move to the polls.

The Georgia Republican Party is not capable of fielding such an operation. While the chairman of the Georgia Republican Party is the greatest booster and defender of the party machine, one is hard pressed to find a senior Republican in the state with kind words about the operation.

Democrats are investing in a machine at the party level to turn out the vote. The Republican Party in Georgia has only invested in a machine to turn out conspiracies about the 2020 election.

Ossoff seems to be campaigning as his own man

Credit: Sarah Peacock

Credit: Sarah Peacock

One special election candidate vented to me that he showed up at his county party to speak and had to wait for a guest speaker to finish re-litigating how Democrats stole the election. The guest speaker ran so long, the candidate cut short his speech to get to another event.

The state party took credit for the candidate’s win. He tells me not only was the state party nowhere to be seen, but after the stirring speech by the guest speaker about the stolen election, the local party did not even send poll watchers to the polls on Election Day.

Jon Ossoff has $40 million-plus and Mike Collins has $2 million. Collins has no ability to field an operation like Rick Jackson is building. He might be able to benefit from that operation and get carried across the finish line. But as more stories come out about Collins and those around him, one would be hard pressed to wonder why Rick Jackson would want to give any appearance of running as a ticket with Collins.

Ossoff and Bottoms claimed they would be campaigning together but given Bottom’s under-performance in the metro Atlanta area in her primary, Ossoff has seemed more to be his own man, not the agent of a resurgent Democratic Party in Georgia.

Perhaps Jackson can carry Collins across the finish line. Perhaps ticket splitting in Georgia, like most other parts of the country, is a thing of the past. But if that is the case, based on current polling trends, the odds in a midterm election with a Republican president benefit Democrats, not Republicans.

So, the GOP should hope that Rick Jackson’s turn out machine is fully operational in November and that suburban voters in Georgia still pride themselves in splitting tickets.

Erick Erickson is host of the nationally syndicated “Erick Erickson Show,” heard weekdays from noon to 3 p.m. on WSB Radio. He is also a contributor to the AJC.

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