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RandySF

(57,612 posts)
Sat Oct 17, 2020, 07:22 PM Oct 2020

GA-07: Suburban White women could flip Georgia blue.

Throughout her 2018 run for Georgia’s 7th Congressional District, in the traditionally conservative northern suburbs of Atlanta, Bourdeaux targeted a constituency that President Trump won handily in 2016 and has fought hard to retain in 2020: suburban White women. She lost by just 433 votes, in the closest congressional race in the country. And though the coronavirus has forced Bourdeaux to abandon the suburban happy hours of her 2018 campaign, she is still relying on these women to help flip the district blue.

The Atlanta suburbs are seen as a political bellwether for the state of Georgia: If they flip, analysts say, so will the state. The 7th District is a place where “the Old South meets the U.N.,” said Bianca Keaton, chairwoman of the local Democratic Party. While Republicans have held this seat since 1995, its demographics are changing. It is now a majority-minority district with 25 percent of its population born outside the United States. Trump won the 7th District by six points, a far slimmer margin than previous Republican candidates for president. Many residents were “stunned” when gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams won the district in 2018.

Bourdeaux was the only White candidate to run in this year’s six-person primary. And though she was criticized for failing to represent the district’s communities of color, she won by a landslide, beating her closest opponent by more than 40 percentage points. Her campaign tapped into the political energy and deep pockets of suburban White women, many of whom had never spoken openly about their politics, convinced no one in their neighborhood shared their anti-Trump views. Bourdeaux focused on women like her neighbor, who she says would wrap Hillary Clinton’s biography in brown paper before she took it to the pool.

Could Bourdeaux convince her that others might be secretly reading it, too?




https://www.thelily.com/suburban-white-women-could-flip-georgia-blue-can-carolyn-bourdeaux-convince-them-to-come-out-of-hiding/

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