Organize the South

Most folks don’t realize this, but Bobby Kahn has been the chair of the Georgia Democratic Party since 2004. Before this position Kahn was chief of staff for former Gov. Roy Barnes. Most folks also don’t realize this, but Georgia has a Democratic Party. At least it does on paper.

Of course, there are Democrats in Georgia, but that’s a long way from saying there is a real coordinated Democratic Party. Especially one capable of running an election worth anything. One should note, I don’t say the party is capable of communicating what it believes. That would be unfair since the Democratic Party as a whole seems to believe in nothing. I believe a state party structure is really about getting people involved, developing candidates, and getting out the vote. In those three areas I think we can say the Georgia Democratic Party is a failure.

How much of this failure rests on Bobby Kahn’s shoulders? Consider this. In 2004 John Kerry ran for president with the worst campaign I had seen to that point. He visited Georgia a total times of zero. Nada. None. In fact, Zell Miller, the only allegedly democratic US senator from Georgia, campaigned for George Bush. Kerry pulled 41.4% of the vote in Georgia.

Fast forward to 2006 to the gubernatorial campaign. Mark Taylor runs a campaign which eclipses Kerry’s in terms of incompetence. It now stands as the worst campaign I’ve ever seen. Taylor did no polling in the campaign, instead he poured what money he had into intensely negative ads. This wasn’t too hard since that was his strategy for winning the primary against Cathy Cox. Taylor alienated everyone except Latino and Black voters. Women, rural voters, urban voters, etc. all went for Perdue. Taylor got 38.2% of the vote.

The lesson here, I believe, is that Taylor would have gotten more votes if he hadn’t campaigned. True, there are more voters in general during a presidential election cycle. But Kerry didn’t campaign in Georgia. The fact that Taylor supposedly did should have made up for that. Mark Taylor bears most of the responsibility for the abject failure of 2006. Yet Bobby Kahn chaired a party that lost almost 3% of the vote in 2 years by campaigning!

In the interest of full disclosure, I’m not a Democrat. I haven’t been since 1988 when Dukakis sucked the hope out of me during his run for president. The Democrats are a neoliberal party, so I will not be a Democrat. Still, it’s difficult to live in a one party state. It would be nice to have two neoliberal parties in Georgia. It wouldn’t be democracy, but it would be nice. Perhaps, now that Kahn is gone, Georgia Democrats will focus on building a base. We’re not completely out of the woods though. In the recent Atlanta Journal-Constitution article Kahn warned us all, “"I'm not fading away. I'll always help people with their campaigns." If he really wanted to help, he would kindly refrain.