In Georgia, Politics Moves Past Just Black and White
As to whether she voted for President Obama, she leaned back in her rocker, arched her eyebrows and reiterated her own words.
“I am a Democrat,” she said coyly, “who will vote Republican.”
Douglasville and its surrounding county, Douglas, are part of the housing boom that has remade the metro region. Two decades ago, downtown Douglasville was surrounded by farmland.
Today commercial parks dot the landscape, home to companies like Subaru and Google, which built a data center here in 2003, adding 350 jobs. A firm tied to Tyler Perry, the black actor and filmmaker whose studios are in Atlanta, has bought 1,300 acres of land. New housing developments, well-tended communities with names like Tributary and Palmer Falls, are filled with young black professionals.
Douglas County’s black population rose more than 200 percent from 2000 to 2010; its Democratic Party is experiencing a revival. More than a decade ago, white Republicans held all five seats on the County Commission; today there are three white Republicans and two black Democrats. Mitt Romney won Georgia in 2012 with 53 percent of the vote, but Mr. Obama won Douglas County.
Among the newcomers is Dalia Racine, an African-American prosecutor running for county district attorney. She was born in New York, attended high school in Virginia, college in Florida, law school in Atlanta. She and her husband moved to Douglasville, in search of a bigger home in which to raise a family, when they discovered they were having twins.
A friend recently hosted a house party for her; a diverse, though mostly African-American, crowd attended, nibbling on wrap sandwiches, sweets and fruit.
“Highly qualified, professional candidates like myself — we’re able to throw our hats in the ring right now,” Ms. Racine said. “The voters are aware of it. The media’s aware of it. Republicans are aware of it.”
Black and White
A marble obelisk with a soldier on top — a monument to Confederate veterans — greets visitors to Waycross, on the edge of the Okefenokee Swamp. If Atlanta, four hours north, is the new Georgia, Waycross is steeped in the old.
On a recent morning, a small crowd of several dozen Democratic enthusiasts, mostly blacks, gathered in an old railway depot, where their Senate nominee, Ms. Nunn, was to speak. Among the first in line was Johnny Lee Roper, 77, who serves on the City Council in nearby Douglas, dressed in olive green suit, suspenders and black straw hat.
“All us people of color believe that Michelle is going to be our liberator,” he said.
Ms. Nunn’s appearance in this city of roughly 14,000 people was a reminder that she needs every black vote she can get — and of how race still governs politics in much of Georgia. The handful of whites in the crowd included a woman who gave her name only as Glenda; she did not want her Republican neighbors to learn she was there.
