The Georgia Senate Seat Could Be In Play-- Or The DSCC Could Screw It Up With An "Ex"-Republican

Tomlinson (left) and Amico (right)

Georgia still has a PVI that shows it being a red state-- R+5-- but it has been behaving more and more like a swing state lately. I've spoken with operatives working for Bernie, Biden, Kamala and Warren who feel like Georgia is in play for their campaigns. In last year's gubernatorial election, a crooked secretary of state, Brian Kemp, oversaw an aggressive campaign of voters suppression to beat-- if he even really did-- Democrat Stacey Abrams 1,978,408 (50.2%) to 1,923,685 (48.8%). That's a swing state result, not a red state result. Schumer immediateklyset about to recruit Abrams to run for the Senate seat held by vulnerable freshman incumbent David Perdue (R). The filing deadline isn't until March 6-- for a May 19 primary-- so there is still a great deal of possible fluidity here. But... with Abrams having taken herself out of consideration, the Democratic Party has been coalescing around Columbus mayor Teresa Tomlinson, who finished her second term this past January. Tomlinson, first elected mayor in 2010, is universally viewed as an extremely successful mayor of Georgia's third largest city (population is around 200,000) and was reelected in 2014 with 63% of the vote.

Schumer appears to have been positive about Tomlinson running-- while still lighting a candle every Friday for Abrams. I've heard Beltway rumors though that the DSCC is quietly backing a conservative "ex"-Republican to run, Sarah Riggs Amico. She's kind of a Joe Biden-like figure in this race, not just because she's too conservative for a Democrat but because she's counting on her former proximity to Stacey Abrams to woo primary voters. Last year, in the middle of her campaign for lieutenant governor, the Atlanta Journal Constitution reported that her trucking business was sued for racial discrimination and creating a hostile (racist) work environment. Friends of mine in Georgia tell me Amico is a fake and was a Republican until a couple of years ago. She contributed to Romney's campaign against Obama 3 times. Now that she's trying to get into office as a Democrat, she claims to have given up her anti-Choice beliefs but doesn't have any kind of real understanding of the issue.

Abrams showed that in swing states like Georgia, running a real Democrat instead of a Republican-lite candidate, turns up the enthusiasm and turns out the vote. That flies in the face of everything an old hack like Schumer-- and his DSCC-- believe. To them, Sarah Riggs Amico's conservatism is just what the doctor ordered-- the perfect lesser of two evils race they love to fight... and usually lose. Abrams did so much better than any of the GOP-lite statewide candidates of the recent past-- like Michelle Nunn and Jason Carter-- because she wasn't that kind of candidate.

I suspect that if Amico gets into the race-- and I'm 99% sure she will-- that will trigger another garbage stands-for-nothing candidate to jump in: Jon Ossoff. And if Ossoff gets in, then it's a complete free-for-all, with Clarkson mayor Ted Terry, and probably a smart African-American politician-- say DeKalb County Chief Executive Michael Thurmond. who looks at an all-white field and comes to the conclusion that winning the nomination will be easy-peasy-- and it just escalates from there. Welcome to another Colorado shit-show of a primary. Others already taking up ballot space or thinking seriously of doing so: Akhenaten Hotep Amun (who also ran for Lt. Gov. in 2018), Marckeith DeJesus (a frequent candidate), Jason Carter (Jimmy's grandson who ran for governor in 2014), Elaine Whigham Williams (who thinks she ran for president in 2016), state Rep. Scott Holcomb and civil rights activist Raphael Warnock.