As President Donald Trump’s approval ratings hover around 40 percent (according to Gallup, his term average to date is 38 percent), Democrats across the country believe they have a chance to gain seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate in this November’s congressional elections. In Savannah, where U.S. Rep. Earl “Buddy” Carter, a Republican, is approaching the end of his second term in Congress, Georgia Democrats in the state’s First Congressional District are hopeful they can regain a coveted seat held for the last 25 years by a Republican.
The most recent elections in Georgia have featured Democratic candidates with very little name recognition, resulting in an easy wins for Republican, according to Charles S. Bullock, III, professor of public and international affairs at the University of Georgia.
Back in 1993, Republican Rep. Jack Kingston won the House seat and retained it through 2015 when he decided to run for U.S. Senate. (Kingston is now a political talkshow staple, where he is an avid supporter of President Donald Trump.) He lost, but Carter, who had previously been a member of the Georgia Legislature, first as a state representative and then as a state senator, ran and beat his Democratic challenger, Brian Reese, with 60.9 percent of the vote. Carter carried all but two counties in the district.
Democrats didn’t even put up a candidate when Carter ran for re-election in 2016.
Now, with the campaign for the November elections in full swing, the race to the House is on.
Getting to Dem
The U.S. Census Bureau’s 2016 population estimate for Chatham County was 289,082 residents, which makes Chatham the most populated Georgia county outside of the Atlanta metropolitan area. Take a look at a map of how Georgia’s districts are divided, and you will see Chatham County consistently goes “blue” during presidential elections. This then begs the question: Why isn’t the area represented by a Democrat?
“Chatham County doesn’t nominate the district,” Bullock explained. “You have to find some other Democrats. You go down to Liberty County and you find some Democrats there, but unless you stretch that district into another metropolitan area, you aren’t going to find Democrats.”
When Democrat John Barrow represented Georgia’s 12th congressional district from 2005 to 2015, his district included much of the Georgia side of the Central Savannah River Area. The outline of Georgia’s districts were redrawn not once, but twice, by the Georgia General Assembly – controlled by the GOP majority – during Barrow’s years in Congress in an effort to weed out potential Democratic votes for Barrow and find more rural Republican supporters for a challenger. This forced Barrow to move first from Athens to Savannah and then from Savannah to Augusta to remain a resident of the district he was representing.
Bullock, who has been at the University of Georgia since 1968, knows firsthand the ways of the House, as he served as a legislative assistant to Congressman Bill Stuckey in 1976. His teaching and research specialties are legislative politics and southern politics, points of interest that have helped him author, co-author, and edit roughly 30 books and more than 150 articles in major political science, public administration and education journals. 
One of Carter’s strongest challengers is Lisa Ring, Bullock said. Ring identifies as a progressive Democrat. Aside from running against an incumbent, she must appeal to the region’s swing voters. She also has to gin up name recognition.
Carter, who has been active in Georgia politics for years, is well-known in the region. He was the mayor of Pooler and a member of the Georgia General Assembly before his time on the Hill. He operated a small pharmacy in Pooler for more than 30 years. For as many Georgians who oppose him, Bullock said his influence should not be dismissed.
“Most people don’t pay much attention to politics, or if they do, they pluck into politics just before the election,” Bullock said. “Beyond that, they’re not paying much attention. The advantage the incumbent has is his name has been out there for a while.”
An unknown Democratic challenger faces an uphill challenge, even if the political climate suggests otherwise.
“The Democratic nominee has the added challenge of running against an incumbent,” Bullock said. “They might have had a better chance four years ago when the seat was free.”
In Bullock’s eyes, if Democrats were wise, they would learn from last year’s special election in Georgia’s Sixth District, involving Democratic nominee Jon Ossoff and Republican opponent Karen Handel. Ossoff had all the money and outside support needed to run a successful campaign. He received 48.1 percent of the vote in the nonpartisan blanket primary on April 18, 2017. Since no candidate secured a majority, the top two vote-getters, Ossoff and Handel, competed in a runoff election later in June. Ossoff lost, making Handel the first Republican woman to be elected to Congress from Georgia. It was also the most expensive congressional race in American history.
All that considered, what would it take for Lisa Ring, or another Democrat, to unseat an incumbent Republican in a district represented by a Republican since 1993?
“A quick answer would be divine intervention,” Bullock laughed. “A more serious one would be for the minority party to win, the majority party has to have some sort of scandal. There’s an old saying in politics: voters don’t vote for challengers, but they will come out against an incumbent.”
Bullock explained that as an incumbent, Carter has his name in the press significantly more than Ring, and regardless whether locals like him, they at least know who he is. “If you’re a challenger, then you want to make the incumbent the issue or bring up something the incumbent has done,” he said. “Otherwise, voters keep voting the way they have and the incumbent keeps getting elected.”
Ringing True?
Lisa Ring’s campaign office at 5960 Ogeechee Road provides just enough space for what she hopes to accomplish in the next eight months: A seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.
At 18 years old, Ring first got involved in the political activism scene when she became a community organizer in Philadelphia where she studied at Temple University. The next few decades filled up with “family, work and life,” as she put it. She started out as a corrections officer before becoming a military spouse then a military mom of four. Still, her optimistic, youthful vision of a better world persevered and inspired her to push herself further into the local public eye.
That began with helping city and county leaders organize the district, a sector in which she says she saw a lack of leadership and collaboration. Several years later, she finds herself as Chair of the Bryan County Democratic Committee and Vice Chair of the Georgia Democratic Rural Caucus. Last year, she served as a Bernie Sanders 
delegate to the Democratic National Convention and as co-chair of the Georgia Sanders delegation.
“I decided I’ve had enough of partisan bickering and (of) elected officials who represent corporate interests over caring for hard-working Americans,” Ring said. “I want to make life better for the people of the First District, and I feel it is my responsibility to do all I can to fight for all of us.”
Despite her challenges, Ring believes now is the time for her to run, because there is no historical precedence for what that country has experienced in the last three years.
“Millions of Americans are mobilized to make this happen and tens of thousands of them are right here in Coastal Georgia,” she said. “We have been talking to people all over the district in an effort to involve people who have been ignored for too long. That’s what will make the difference.”
Extensive voter education and outreach are key, Ring explains, particularly in marginalized communities. She’s trying not to speak solely to her “base” audience, but to voters of all parties because the same major issues affect everyone. Her campaign is even gaining support from Republican and Independent voters, she contends, a sign people want to move beyond the polarizing partisan politics that are so present in state and federal politics.
“We are continuing the work we’ve been doing for two years, of reaching out to everyone in the district, communities of color, rural counties, college students, the LGBTQIA community, and showing them that the quality of their lives depends on their political involvement. We are going to win with a comprehensive ‘grassroots campaign’ that involves knocking on every door and calling every voter.”
(Dem)ographics
Georgia’s First District has four military installations in it and over 75,000 veterans residing within it. According to Bullock, military voters are typically more liberal but don’t always show up in non-presidential election years.
It should come as no surprise then that Ring, a military spouse and mother, considers herself a candidate committed to caring for the district’s military families and veterans. Her husband currently serves the Georgia Army National Guard, and her son is a soldier. She’s not unfamiliar with the issues faced by those who serve. Many young military families receive food assistance due to low salaries.
“Low wages are unacceptable for civilian workers but are even more of an insult and a burden to those who serve our country,” she said.
Including technical schools, there are 10 colleges in the district, making young people crucial to this election, Ring’s campaign and, of course, the direction of our country’s policies. Ring said her campaign is working with interns and college organizations to organize an extensive “ground operation” in those schools. So far they’ve been received with enthusiasm in the college and arts communities. It helps that more than half of Ring’s campaign staff is under the age of 30, including her campaign manager and social media director.
In Ring’s, well, ring, the goal is to set aside politically motivated divides and focus on solutions. Only then, she emphasized, can the community begin to better lives without leaving anyone behind.
“While I am a Progressive, I’ve had Republicans, independents, Green Party members and conservative Democrats express their support because they want a leader who displays integrity, listens to voters, and focuses on the issues.”
Editor’s note: We have reached out to Rep. Buddy Carter for an interview.
By Emilie Kefalas.
