Due diligence: GA House of Representatives 146

Let's not assume we know anything

I'm trying to do some basic reading-in on Georgia state Assembly races; one in particular, actually. I’ve never been to Georgia; I have a few contacts in Georgia politics and some sense of underlying demographic and political conditions, and, like, I can find it on a map, but… that doesn’t mean much.

“Back to basics” being the order of the day, here’s what I have:

Up front, I think as with Alabama, it’s very easy to read this wrong as an outsider - especially a non-Black outsider, given the state is 36% Black folks (better than two and a half times the national baseline) and anti-Blackness is a historical third rail in every Southern state; so we should restrict ourselves to very basic observations, just enough so that we can listen to someone tell us what’s happening and not be, like, totally stupid about it.

It’s going to be a lot easier if we don’t have to unlearn things when we talk to people, so let’s keep it limited to broad strokes as much as possible.

Statewide social indicators start out somewhat troubling, not “failed-state” troubling like Alabama or Mississippi, but still eyebrow-raising.

Georgia’s infant mortality rate is 6.12 per 1,000 live births according to the CDC; that’s the 15th worst IMR in the country.

COVID vaccination rates stand at 67.6%, very near the global average, but substantially below other American states. Becker Hospital Review ranks it 44th.

In America, mass incarceration is such a massive industry (it’s highly privatized) that it’s a demographic factor, and Georgia is no different; its incarceration rate of 968 per 100,000 people as of late 2021 makes it one of the highest in the country. A total of 102,000 people in Georgia are incarcerated, or roughly one percent of Georgia’s entire population.

Georgia’s Gini coefficient is 0.479 as of late 2021, which is the ninth-highest in the country, but fairly in line with other American states.

A population heatmap of Georgia suggests very, very rough outlines of the terrain we’re looking at.

Again, similar to Alabama, we’re looking at a couple large population centers and significant tracts of low-density land. Population density maps clearly but somewhat untidily onto partisanship - specifically, Presidential election outcome - which is, again, a familiar pattern in American states.

At a very gross level, zooming all the way out on political party strength graphs, we can discern a fairly familiar blue-to-red pattern, starting with Federal offices then extending throughout state offices.

Unlike other Southern states, we’re not seeing an earlier blue-to-red shift occur in the ‘60s through the ‘80s as racists shift their affiliations from Democratic to Republican; modern political conditions - and, in this era, digital politics - is driving the shift, I think.

Georgia’s House of Representatives is the lower chamber in its traditional bicameral legislature. It currently sits at 103-76 Republican; the state House and Senate flipped in 2003-2005 and hasn’t reverted since. It is responsible for redistricting by ordinary assembly measure, per Princeton Gerrymandering Project.

This starts to get more specific, and thus at a higher risk of being wrong, but in detail, let’s zoom in on one specific GA House of Representatives race, District 146.

District 146 is essentially Warner Robins and Perry; we’re talking 58,085 people in 20,640 households in 2010.

What jumps out at you when you start to look into it is how many people work in government, nearly 1 in 5 working adults - almost four times the rate as the rest of Georgia.

I note that Robins Air Force Base is in the area, potentially accounting for those numbers.

If those 5,671 people are employed in Air Force or Air Force-related government jobs, you’re looking at an addressable plurality of voters in this district with relatively unified ways of addressing them.

So, prior to January 6, 2021, it strikes me that it would have been a solid bet that a white person who works for the Air Force in Georgia would break Republican just on tribal affiliation.

Given a post-June 2022, post-Dobbs environment, however, with significant fractures visible in the Republican Party and generic ballot and Presidential-popularity advantages beginning to accrue to Democratic candidates (or at least not detract), those people look like highly-educated (the Air Force has consistently high ASVAB score requirements) and potentially addressable crossover voters. The Republican Party has gotten fairly “cringe” lately from an educated American’s viewpoint, with its now-six-year-old infantile obsession with Trump and its startling lack of ability to articulate any narratives other than attacks on minorities.

Similarly, if there are Black service-members, and especially Black folks working on or around the base and in related industries, that’s another important group to consider as well.

That suggests if I do an ad run, and I tell Facebook, let's say, "show my ad to everyone in Warner Robins or Perry and a 5-mile radius, EXCEPT anyone who has ever expressed an interest in Air Force rah-rah content, AND require that they have attended a four-year liberal arts college” - I’m going to pick out some of that demographic.

Moreover, if I have access to a majority-white feedback group and creative volunteers, that’s actually not that significant a handicap; assuming I can still exert editorial control from people of color and less-represented minorities, it’s actually somewhat of a boon.

I think that’s about where I stand right now; anything past here I’m going to need to get from actually listening to people and how they think about it, and I have at least a relatively simple idea to discuss and shoot down and listen to (or actually implement).