My first job out of college was as an extremely low-level staffer to U.S. Sen. Sam Nunn, the longtime Democratic senator from Perry.
It wasn’t nearly as glamorous as I’d imagined being a Senate aide would be, nor as lucrative. (I made $17,000 per year.) But Nunn had a reputation as a thoughtful policymaker and a global statesman, and I was proud to work for him, partially because of the phrase I heard repeatedly in those years: “I’m a Sam Nunn Democrat.”
Being a Sam Nunn Democrat meant the person calling to ask for help renewing a passport or the one introducing themselves at a fire station fish fry may or may not have been a Democrat, but they liked Nunn so much they supported him, no matter his party affiliation or theirs. It was also Nunn’s path to repeated reelection, including a likely fifth term had he run for one.
I thought a lot about those Sam Nunn Democrats on Monday during a conversation with former Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, who announced last week that he has officially switched parties from Republican to Democrat. The change-up was no big surprise, considering Duncan’s prime time speech at the Democratic National Convention last year. That made local Republicans so irate they formally booted him from the party and banned him from attending state GOP events.
Like a lot of breakups, it has not been pretty.
The real surprise came this week when Duncan told me on the “Politically Georgia” podcast that he is not just a Democrat — he is also “absolutely” considering a run for governor in the Democratic primary next year.
You could practically hear the groans from liberal Democrats and Team Trump Republicans across the state. The texts from partisans rolled in: “NO!!!” and “Gov. Duncan??!!”
A social media post from Duncan’s old nemesis, President Donald Trump, called him “a total loser” and predicted, “You don’t even have a chance!!!”
But Duncan is serious about a run, and with a measly 35% approval rating in Georgia, the Democratic Party in particular has a state full of voters telling it to try something — maybe anything — new or different. It doesn’t get much more different than the recently Republican, former lieutenant governor who wrote an op-ed for the AJC in April titled “What it means to be a conservative.”
During the podcast, Duncan laid out his thinking for considering a run, even with a field for governor that’s getting so full it’s starting to feel like the waiting room at the DMV. The idea, he said, came from Democrats themselves.
“This came from folks that have invested their entire life into the Democratic Party, who have paid attention to how the policies are shaping up,” he said. “I’m certain I’m not the perfect candidate to do it. Certainly, I’ve been a Republican for, obviously, a number of years. But I do think this is a unique opportunity in Georgia for us to really take a deep breath and to put Democrats back in the ideas business.”
The ideas business he’s talking about is finding new solutions to seemingly intractable partisan standoffs on big issues like Medicaid expansion, immigration and gun safety.
On guns, for example, Duncan said, “The numbers are just off the charts for folks that want to see Democrats and Republicans move their feet on gun safety.” He had several places he thought he could make progress on the issues. He feels the same way about immigration and health care.
An obvious gulf between Duncan and most Democrats is his 2019 vote in favor of the state’s six-week abortion ban, which Democrats vocally opposed. He said he hasn’t changed his personal opinion on abortion but on the laws limiting it.
“I think the mistake was that I took my personal views and thought that every Georgian should have those personal views,” he said. “I think there was probably a better opportunity to have a bigger discussion with more Georgians, and we would have probably found a more common ground than six weeks.”
Will anti-abortion Democrats buy that? It’s hard to say. It’s even hard to believe. But if he runs, that’s what primary elections are all about.
Overall, Duncan diagnosed the biggest problem in American politics as our own inability to disagree with each other and still live side by side.
In a strange example of that, former Republican state Rep. Mike Dudgeon declined to comment on Duncan’s chances in a statewide race because the two are still friends and neighbors. Dudgeon said he didn’t want to damage that relationship, even if their politics are now far apart.
Of all of the reasons someone has declined comment, that might be the most refreshing. It’s definitely the most welcome.
Only Georgia voters can say if there is any such thing as a Geoff Duncan Democrat in the state. Is there really an appetite for a white, male, anti-abortion Republican convert from Forsyth? We can at least say for sure voters in either party haven’t had that option before.
There’s an old political saying that the only thing in the middle of the road is a yellow line or roadkill. Or maybe it’s a party that figured out how to get somewhere.
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