By Elliott Brack
Editor and Publisher, GwinnettForum
NOV. 8, 2019 | On the local political scene, we see two developments in the 2020 races for the various offices of Gwinnett County.
- Republicans are having a hard time finding people who want to offer for office.
- Democrats are finding lots of people interested in seeking elective office.
There’s a reason. As we have mentioned before, it harks back in one sense to what happened in 1984, when Republicans won all local contested races. That came about because of the rapid change in the make-up of the Gwinnett population. From 1976 to 1984, the throng of people moving into Gwinnett numbered 105,400. And almost all of them were white Republicans. (The diverse populations did not begin moving to Gwinnett until 1988.)
Democrats got through the 1980 and 1982 elections without being scarred much, but by 1984, the overwhelming voting of the Republicans swept all contested Democrats out of power.
A similar sweep will probably take place in 2020 for Gwinnett offices in almost every race, except this time it will be the Democrats who win decisively. It might be extremely tough for a Republican to win any Gwinnett race in 2020.
We began to see this change in 2018, as Democrats took two seats on both the county commission and school board. And Brian Whiteside surprised many when he won the solicitor general’s job over capable Rosana Szabo by a sizeable margin. Most agree that Whiteside won in the face of the good job Ms. Szabo had done because of one reason…..that he had a “D” besides his name. After all, Stacey Abrams then dramatically scored a 67 percent victory in Gwinnett. She brought along a lot of Democrats with her.
Just because a party comes to power does not necessarily mean that every candidate of their party is a worthy candidate.
One drawback in 2020 may be that Gwinnett may elect some Democrats for the mere reason that they are running as Democrats, and not necessarily because they are the better candidate. If Democrats should elect an unworthy candidate, we can only hope that this person will have a better candidate running against them in coming races, and that the voters will see that possibility. Or a challenging Republican might demonstrate that the Democrat has done a sorry job in office, and surprise people by overturning the Democrat.
One of GwinnettForum’s Continuing Objectives for the county reads: “High quality candidates for elective office in Gwinnett.” When we have good candidates in both parties, it will not matter which person wins. It will mean that good government can flourish in Gwinnett, and in the end, the people are the real winners. We look forward to that day.
Down in the Albany, Ga. city elections this week, a familiar name popped up. In a vote that came down literally to the wire, businessman Chad Warbington edged four-term incumbent Commissioner Roger Marietta by 20 votes, 1,474-1,454, to claim the Ward IV seat.
He is the son of Betty and Charles Warbington of Gwinnett, and brother of Chuck Warbington, Lawrenceville city manager. Chad Warbington is a Dacula High graduate, Georgia Tech graduate and mechanical engineer and was with Proctor and Gamble for years. In 1998, he purchased Shutters Plus, a custom shutter and cabinet manufacturer, and growing it into a full interior residential business.
Chad and his wife have three daughters. Their oldest is now enrolled at Georgia Tech.
- Have a comment? Send to: elliott@brack.net
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