By Elliott Brack
Editor and Publisher, GwinnettForum
OCT. 27, 2020 | It was a relatively short news release, just arriving late last week. But it carried a powerful message.
It read: “On Tuesday, September 22, members of the Gwinnett County Republican Party voted for a resolution that ‘… urges all Republicans and Gwinnett County residents to join in the vote against the Transportation Referendum” that will be on the ballot in November.’”
What? The Gwinnett Republican Party, the group that could not even field candidates in all of the Gwinnett races, finally rears its head, coming down against the transit issue in Gwinnett. We would never have thought that they would be so bold to speak out on this issue, when they have been so timid this political season.
We wonder what caused this group to take this step. Word on the street is that Democrats in Gwinnett are going to back passage of the Gwinnett traffic referendum. That party has issued no statement to this effect, but that’s the word on the street that we hear.
If, as many expect, Democrats sweep most of the offices in Gwinnett this year, which we hear from both Democratic and Republican sources, that may help carry the transit vote. This could spell many years of a moribund Republican Party in Gwinnett.
The irony of this is that, since 1984, Gwinnett has been pretty much a Republican county for all these years. Only in the last two elections have the Democrats begun to carry some legislative offices. As Hillary Clinton won the county in 2016 with 52 per cent of the vote, and Stacey Abrams in 2018 took the county with 66 percent of the vote, that brought along quite a few legislative Democrats, to allow them to take control of the delegation at the statehouse.
And now the Democrats feel like they can take most of the offices this year. Along the way, that could mean that some Republican office holders, who are doing an excellent job in their elected offices, may be in deep trouble. Yes, it’s possible that some less-than-stellar Democrats could unseat some superb Republicans. That would be a shame.
You wonder why the Republican Party came out with this pronouncement when it did. After all, so far more than 318,282 local residents have already voted, as of Monday morning. There are 581,484 Gwinnettians registered, so 40 percent have voted. If the GOP was all bothered about this cause, why did they wait until after so many people had taken advantage of Early Voting?
There’s another issue in this election year for the two parties. We’re hearing more consideration from people in both parties, and especially from independents, wondering why both the County Commission and School Board are partisan offices. They want these offices to be free of party politics and open to anyone that wants to qualify for office, without having to run under a partisan umbrella.
- Have a comment? Send to: elliott@brack.net
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