- President Biden’s 2020 victory in Georgia was one of the biggest Democratic breakthroughs that year.
- With effective on-the-ground organizing, Biden flipped a state that had long backed GOP WH nominees.
- But organizers told The New York Times they’re concerned Georgia isn’t at the top of the party’s 2024 list.
In 2020, Georgia was the the cherry on top for the Biden campaign.
Despite its fast-growing population, the Deep South state continued to retain its conservative edge throughout the 2000s and 2010s, with Democrats sometimes locked in competitive contests with the GOP but more often than not losing statewide by sizable margins.
So when Democrats received encouraging signs that Joe Biden could win Georgia ahead of the 2020 election, the former vice president traveled to the state, with the then-nominee stumping for support in Atlanta and traveling to the late President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s onetime retreat in rural Warm Springs to give a major address.
Biden’s victory in Georgia, where he bested then-President Donald Trump by nearly 12,000 votes out of roughly 5 million ballots cast, was a major triumph for Democrats, who view the state as a critical part of their future electoral coalition.
Democratic Senate victories by Jon Ossoff in 2021 and Raphael Warnock in both 2021 and 2022 reaffirmed Georgia as a place where the party could succeed if they had the right candidates and adequate finances to compete in the state.
But liberal-leaning organizers in Georgia are increasingly concerned that nearly four years after Biden’s breakthrough, Democratic-affiliated groups and organizations aren’t prioritizing the state as they fundraise and plot electoral strategies for 2024, according to The New York Times.
Political funding from Democratic-affiliated organizations was once so plentiful in 2020 and 2021 that state groups were awash in cash in their push to break the GOP’s stranglehold over Georgia politics.
But organizers are now dealing with some coolness toward Biden from demographics that the president will need to win the state again; it’s an issue that’ll force the groups to utilize additional resources to reach those disenchanted individuals, per The Times.
The concern comes just as organizers will soon begin their voter engagement and mobilization work for the 2024 election, which is now less than a year away.
Prince Williams/Wireimage
Cliff Albright, a cofounder and executive director of the Black Voters Matter Fund, told The Times that early signs appeared to show Georgia’s importance in the upcoming election could be slipping in the eyes of some Democratic-leaning groups and donors.
“What we’re hearing is, it’s not, like, first tier,” he said. “So that’s a little disappointing but we don’t know exactly yet what that means. But some early indications are that it’s not going to get top-level prioritization.”
The Biden campaign has long maintained that Georgia, with its vote-rich metropolitan Atlanta population and its large share of Black voters, is a key part of their electoral calculus. And they have the sort of expertise to back it up: Quentin Fulks, the Biden campaign’s principal deputy campaign manager, also managed Warnock’s successful reelection bid last year.
But with no Senate or gubernatorial election driving statewide turnout in 2024, organizers are mapping out the task they’ll face as they look to reelect Biden in a state that he won narrowly in 2020, while he also contends with middling reelect numbers in Georgia as shown in the most recent New York Times/Siena survey.
In a matchup with Trump in the Peach State, Biden trailed the former president 43%-49% among registered voters, while also trailing former UN ambassador Nikki Haley 40%-43% and entering into a 43%-43% tie with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
The Times spoke with numerous organizers and political strategists in Georgia, who said that while a reduction in spending is normal in years without major contests, a focus on the upcoming presidential election and the resources that’ll be needed is to be expected.
“It’s no secret across the ecosystem that fund-raising has been a challenge in 2023 going into 2024,” Democratic strategist Jonae Wartel told the newspaper. “I don’t think that, in this moment, the resourcing is where it needs to be but I really think it’s about engaging and appealing to the donor community to really make early investments.”
