A Political History of Georgia – The Intercept

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With runoff elections in Georgia next month poised to determine which party will have control of the U.S. Senate, national media have turned their eyes south. To help you digest the coming avalanche of Georgia coverage, Ryan Grim sits down with Intercept contributor George Chidi to discuss his states raucous political history.

Ryan Grim: Welcome back to Deconstructed, this is Ryan Grim. Before we start the show today, I wanna ask you all a favor. Right now you can head over to theintercept.com/give and donate to support The Intercepts reporting thats theintercept.com/give. Your donations are what allow us to do the kind of independent, investigative, accountability journalism the public relies on. Later on the show, well talk about a story The Intercept broke that exposed the shady financial dealing of Georgia senator David Perdue, an investigation that is now shaking up a race that determines control of the Senate and the fate for better or for worse of the Biden administrations legislative agenda. This stuff is important, but its expensive to do.

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[Musical interlude.]

Sidney Powell: I think I would encourage all Georgians to make it known that you will not vote at all until your vote is secure. [Applause.]

Lin Wood: If Kelly Loeffler wants your vote, if David Perdue wants your vote, theyve got to earn it. Theyve got to demand publicly: Brian Kemp, call a special session of the Georgia legislature. And if they do not do it, if Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue do not do it, they have not earned your vote. Dont you give it to them.

That was a recent rally in Georgia headlined by former trump lawyer Sidney Powell and Republican heavyweight attorney Lin Wood. But its not the only blow to the GOPs chances in the upcoming Georgia Senate runoffs.

CNN Newscaster: The latest attacks from Ossoff target the timing of Senator Perdues sales of more than $1 million worth of stock from Atlanta-based Cardlytics, a financial company where Perdue was once a board member. In emails obtained by The New York Times, Cardlytics CEO at the time, Scott Grimes, emailed the Senator on January 21: David, I know youre about to do a call with David Evans. As an FYI, I have not told him about the upcoming changes. Senator Perdue responded: I dont know about a call with David or the changes you mentioned. The Cardlytics CEO emailed back the next morning: David, sorry, that email was not meant for you. Wrong David. An email mix-up.

But the next day, on January 23, financial disclosure forms show Perdue sold between $1-$5 million in Cardlytics stock. Six weeks later, Cardlytics stock plummeted when the CEO announced he was stepping down, forecasting disappointing earnings. On March 18, with Cardlytics stock at $29 per share, financial disclosures show Perdue bought back between $100-$250,000 worth of Cardlytics stock. Cardlytics is trading this week at around $120 per share.

RG: On Thursday, I added new reporting to this scandal, namely that David Perdue had previously lied and claimed that an independent outside adviser made his trades, but its now clear he personally directed the sale after that email exchange with the CEO.

Im joined by Intercept correspondent George Chidi, whos based in Atlanta and has been closely tracking these races. Youre gonna be hearing a lot about Georgia the next two months, so today on the show we thought wed take a look back at that states tumultuous history and how it ended up in its present political mess.

George and I are gonna run through the history of the state from Oglethorpe to Talmadge, from Tom Watson to FDR, from Jimmy Carter to Stacey Abrams. But first, George, how is that Sidney Powell-Lin Wood rally playing in the news down there?

George Chidi: Oh, my goodness. So for the most part, people, the news, like the AJC, and the television stations, and whatnot theyre not really talking a whole lot about it. Where its coming through at all is in social media. And in that case, its really bifurcated. The progressive people in Georgia are seeing this and its mockery, and conservatives are seeing this and theyre torn, like theres a real internal argument happening in social media between, frankly, how crazy do we want to be? And whether or not we need to dismiss this stuff in order to move on and win the two competitive Senate races that are still on the table.

RG: What about David Perdues stock trading scandal? Hes been running this hilarious ad that refers to himself as totally exonerated, which is the least ringing endorsement you can give yourself in a campaign ad.

GC: Its very Trump-like.

RG: It is. It is.

Ad Voiceover: Perdue was cleared by the bipartisan Senate Ethics Committee the SEC and DOJ. Perdue was totally exonerated. Jon Ossoff: you just cant believe him.

RG: But is it getting much play? Is this resonating or do people just not care? And if hes corrupt, hes our corrupt guy?

GC: Oh no they care, but not enough. They care, but its pecking at the edges. And Perdues ad, I might add, is running, but those are not the ads that people are paying any attention to. Because theyre not running a lot of those ads. Like, theyre out there in order to be out there.

Most of Perdues ad buy is about attacking Jon Ossoff as a Marxist radical and all the rest of it.

RG: Mhmm.

GC: Like, its rare to see a positive advertisement at all from Perdue, and completely none from Loffler. Loffler, as far as I can tell, hasnt run a single positive ad at all in the entire cycle. Im exaggerating, but only marginally like the vast majority of the advertising has been attacks on Warnock.

Ad Voiceover: This is America. But will it still be if the radical left controls the Senate? Raphael Warnock calls police thugs and gangsters; hosted a rally for communist dictator Fidel Castro.

GC: And the ad buys are $300 million, apparently, of ad buys have been placed for the cycle in Georgia. Its unreal. Its insane.

RG: And what about on the Democratic side? What are Warnock and Ossoff doing?

GC: So its a mix. Ossoff has taken the attack role. The Ossoff and Warnock campaigns are running as a joint campaign: theyre sharing staff, theyre sharing resources.

Ossoff has taken the attack role here, and hes pounding on the stock trades, but his ad-mix and his public communication mix is 50/50. Its a much more even split between attacking Perdue for being distant, and not holding town halls, and not talking to people, and being some sort of corrupt avatar of corporate America, and his own sort of take on trying to get rural hospitals going and talking about pandemic relief. Warnock is almost exclusively positive, talking, again, about pandemic relief and the soul of the nation stuff.

Its a fascinating problem, as Im looking at this. Both of them have to win. So theyre being very tightly connected. I think somebody got the memo and over on the Republican side, that only one of them has to survive this, so theyre taking a kind of a different tack, each of them.

RG: Right. I think what you said earlier about a lot of voters, you know, caring about Perdues corruption, but not quite caring enough, really kind of flows out of Georgia history, because its a place where political beliefs are held so intensely, and its kind of

GC: It also has a lot of political corruption in its history.

RG: Right.

GC: So, it is, even now, viewed as one of the more corrupt states in the United States. Let me tell you, as a close observer, for the last 10 or 15 years, its gotten better. Its actually better now than it had been, but it took a lot of hard work.

The people who care about the corruption issues, by and large, theyre the minority. The things that motivate voters here are the big-ticket abortion and gay rights for the religious right. Sort of a general anti-, I dont want to say anti-Black, but the sort of white racial resentment, driving some part of that, and this really old plantation class split, where folks whove got money are looking to protect it from the big, bad, evil government. Those are the things that motivate the right, at least, in Georgia.

RG: Right. Its been that way for hundreds of years, in some ways. And so tell us a little bit about James Oglethorpe and the founding of Georgia, and a lot of people might not know this, the really only Southern free state, at least for a while, you know, founded as a free state. How did that happen?

GC: Right. So like first things first, if you walk into the State House, at the top of the stairs, in the most prominent place in Georgia, you will see a giant bust of James Oglethorpe; and even now, hes a revered figure here. Georgia was founded as a state that would not have slavery in it.

RG: Right.

And whats amazing is that while it was founded as a free state and Oglethorpe was a genuine humanitarian, was opposed to slavery, he was this Englishman who had been a kind of prison-rights advocate, who saw the possibility of a colony in Georgia, as this classless society, he was going to bring over all these people who were in debtors prison, and turn them into artisans and farmers and create this kind of utopian society in Georgia.

But the reason that the Crown was OK with it at the time was not because they were humanitarians; they needed a buffer between South Carolina and Spanish Florida, because down in Spanish, Florida, you had some Native American tribes, but you also had the Spaniards who, if enslaved people could get from South Carolina down to Florida, if they would convert to Catholicism, they had their freedom. And then they would form them into kind of guerrilla armies and send them back up into South Carolina, where they would inspire slave revolts.

And from the 1600s on, you had relentless slave revolts in the Caribbean, which people forget the Caribbean was part of Southern culture at the time. The Caribbean was really the kind of center of power and the thing that the English and the Spanish and the French were fighting over.

And the mainland colonies were kind of a side project. But as those slave revolts picked up in the Caribbean, a lot of these planters fled and moved over to South Carolina. And so they were tired of losing their human property through Georgia down into Florida. So they tried to create this whites-only, pro-slavery but free state.

But the problem was they couldnt find white people, because they wouldnt allow Catholics, because they figured the Catholics were going to be linked with Spain, or France, or Ireland, which was you know theyre all at war at this time. So they couldnt find enough people to work the land over there who were white and so they went and, like you said, reverted fairly quickly, 20 years or so, right, they legalized slavery.

And Oglethorpe is going back and forth, invading St. Augustine, invading Florida, the Spanish are invading back. And you dont really have todays Georgia take off until, what? After the American Revolution.

And whats fascinating is that Georgia was actually the place where the cotton gin was invented, is that right?

GC: I believe so.

RG: Which then really explodes slavery through throughout the South. But not throughout the whole state. Its not not like South Carolina where it was dominated. So which parts of Georgia were the ones where slavery was prominent, and where wasnt it?

GC: So its interesting, theres still a belt. You can start that belt in Eastern North Carolina. And that belt goes through the center, and just above the the Southern line of Georgia still primarily African American, because of the legacy of slavery. And thats important, if you want to understand the history of Georgia and sort of Southern politics, one of my pet peeves is how the Confederate revisionist romanticists like to claim all of the South as their own. Appalachian North Georgia Ringgold, Georgia; Dalton, Georgia when people were coming together, just before the Civil War to say, are we going to succeed or not? By and large, North Georgia told the plantation class from South Georgia to go jump in a creek. They werent having it. They didnt want to go.

And as so much of Georgia politics is about like there was a national convention a few weeks later, and they got them all drunk, and then they said yes. But even now, like, yes, the delegates were bribed, they got them drunk, they delayed some of them, and they stole it. They stole it! That was secession. They stole secession in Georgia.

RG: Right. Probably plenty of bribes to go along with it.

GC: A lot of folks either chose not to fight in the north of Georgia, I might add a lot of folks in the north of Georgia either chose not to fight or fought for the union.

RG: Right.

GC: Even now, theres a Union County, Georgia. So its interesting.

Atlanta, I mean, they burned Atlanta to the ground, they burned most of this stuff to the ground, you started to see a few African-American elected leaders.

RG: And so how did that play out, then, in Reconstruction?

GC: I mean, Reconstruction was horrible, dont get me wrong, like it was painful for everybody. Except Black people, for whom it was somewhat less painful. And that didnt last long.

Eventually, guys in white sheets started taking control back, town by town. Everything sort of went wrong. And, eventually, African Americans were effectively re-enslaved, to a point where people who were confronting that in government, were being shot in duels.

RG: And it starts, in a way, with 40 acres and a mule. You know, Field Order No. 15, so General Sherman, marches from Atlanta to the sea, burning everything on the way. And as hes marching, hundreds and then thousands of people free themselves, and walk off of plantations and are following him.

He, in order to try to figure out what to do with this roving band of former slaves, comes up with Field Order No. 15. But that was something that, as I understand it, was pushed for by local Black clergy, and activists and organizers, kind of with the enslaved community. He said, What do you want? And they said, Well, what we want is land. And so he divvies up 40 acres per family, plus, if they want a tired, old mule that the Union Army is no longer using, they can have one of those. And, you know thriving communities begin until Lincoln is assassinated and white supremacist Andrew Johnson comes in and essentially takes it all back.

Now, I understand something similar happened on Sea Island, right, where the local, Black population there was able to take over the land, but they formed militias and fought off attempts to retake that land. And I dont know about this day, but held it for decades or maybe more than 100 years.

GC: Fun fact, David Perdue lives on Sea Island.

RG: There you go. Yeah, he has like a multimillion-dollar house there, right?

GC: Yes, he does: 9000 square feet.

RG: And thats where Republicans well, the American Enterprise Institute, I believe, holds a kind of an annual lavish retreat where something like 30 to 60 private planes land every weekend when they hold that.

And so you were saying as a result of the terror campaign, theres kind of a re-enslavement that brings you, eventually, into the populist era. So youve got Tom Watson, who ends up later in his career, becoming this kind of proud white supremacist, but post-Reconstruction in the kind of 1880s and 1890s, Tom Watson leads this Populist Party, which is going to be a coalition of Black and white laborers. And it starts to make serious inroads, particularly throughout the South, and he has this famous quote in one of the speeches he gave: You are kept apart that you may be separately fleeced of your earnings. You are made to hate each other because upon that hatred is rested the keystone of the arch of financial despotism which enslaves you both.

That is the race-class narrative that the kind of more sophisticated left is pushing now, which says that: Look, the elites are using race as a wedge to divide people who have common interests, to use race to divide the working class. So this is 150 years ago, this is Tom Watson pushing that. He makes some substantial progress, but is eventually kind of co-opted by William Jennings Bryan.

GC: Right.

RG: And so the Democratic Party kind of adopts the white element of that and sheds the Black element of it. Why do you think that that fell apart? And whats the legacy of that effort to create a multiracial populism in Georgia?

GC: I think part of that is to, one, its the same political dynamic to some degree that exists still today a fear amongst modestly educated white people that their labor would be displaced by Black people. Trying to overcome that is unusually difficult. Because there was a lot of Black labor around.

On top of that, there was this sort of long-term resentment that still persists in politics today, you could still see pieces of it, of the cost of educating African-American children. Newspaper editors, eight ways to Sunday, including Grady, would speak at length about the sacrifices that white people had made, since the end of the war, in order to educate Black children, that so much public spending was being devoted toward the education of Black children and, to some degree, they were arguing that this is a waste, because Black people are never going to be fully educated educable equal, its not going to work. Like, look at all this waste that were doing. But were doing it because we want to show our good Christian character and our commitment to this idea. But no, its not working, and we should abandon this, and Black people need to be in their place, because the alternative is this waste.

That idea this idea of wasting energy and resources on Black people that was extremely difficult to overcome for folks who were still struggling to dig out of the problems associated with Reconstruction and their loss of economic power.

RG: It reared its head in the pandemic too, right? Did you see some of that play out?

GC: A little bit.

RG: Yeah.

GC: Like, why are we spending even now, despite a pandemic, well, its half of the people who are dying are Black. Like they its unstated, but its there. And why should I be spending my money in order to create financial support for these people?

RG: So then you move into the Great Depression, and now that the Democratic Party is becoming this interesting kind of white, populist beast down south. So 1936 thats the first time that a majority of Black voters around the country voted for the Democratic Party, or the party of the Confederacy. And FDR wins something like 80-plus percent across Georgia huge New Dealers down there.

At the same time, they elect Richard Russell, who is a kind of a New Dealer, but a white supremacist, and Eugene Talmadge, who was hostile to the New Deal. And his argument, as I understand it, tracks with what you were saying earlier: he was worried that the New Deal, by raising wages and living standards for everyone, would undo the apartheid that Georgia had implemented. Yet you had this kind of two-tier system, where whites were making one wage and living in certain areas, Blacks were making different wages and living in different areas. Thats how he wanted it to stay. And if you improved everybodys lot, that put that whole project at risk. And these are people in the same party.

So yeah, who is Talmadge and whats his legacy?

GC: So Im gonna back up for a second. Start at the turn of the century: white conservatives in the South had fomented a race riot in Atlanta, through the newspapers, particularly Watsons, but others, saying that Black people have finally started to run amok, theyre raping and attacking our white women, and we need to do something.

The new Klan emerges. Stone Mountain starts getting carved. Stone Mountain is a monument to the Confederacy in Georgia that, I might add, is two miles from my house and is the largest monument to the Confederacy in the United States. Its still the most popular thing anybody visits in Georgia, because its a nice park. But theres a giant carving of Confederate leaders on the side of a mountain.

And successively, Democratic leaders governors, Senators, whatnot they oriented themselves toward this idea that white supremacy is the most important thing. Eugene Talmadge, I would suggest, is the apotheosis of this political trend. A populist, absolutely, like in the vein of Donald Trump, a chicken in every pot populist. Like, I want the people of Georgia to know that their government is doing what they want it to do. The people of Georgia, among other things, want them Blacks kept in place. [Sighs.] And he, along with Richard Russell, were sort of instrumental in redefining this sense of rugged individualism, a very sort of classic, what we would think of as conservative views: free markets and free ideas, you should be able to do well based on your own individual enterprise and the governments job is to make sure that it can do that for you, with you, as a partner.

The thing is he got elected because he was able to tap very deeply into the white supremacist, white resentment of the white working class of Georgia, who felt that their position was owed almost entirely to well, it was not that their position was owed to being superior to Black people, but if there was any question of equality, that thats enough. Like there are no other issues for a subset of Georgia voters the white Georgia voters, then: Am I better than the Black guy whos competing for the same job that Im competing with?

RG: Right. And after his landslide win in 1936, Roosevelt starts to think that he has the power, that he can maybe do something about this. And now he comes at these Southern Dixiecrats in the next midterm and just gets crushed.

GC: Yeah.

RG: Like they annihilate him.

GC: Like, I think Talmadge won two, three counties. Maybe?

RG: You mean lost two or three counties?

GC: He lost two or three counties. Like he won everywhere. Bearing in mind, youve got no Black people voting, but still.

Eugene Talmadge died in office. And there was a question about he was Governor-elect, he died, essentially in the lame duck period, and the state constitution didnt say who would become governor in the lame duck period. Would it be the lieutenant governor?

RG: The U.S. Constitution is silent on that, too.

GC: Absolutely. Well, we fixed it now. But there was some question of political philosophical difference between the Lieutenant Governor-elect Melvin E. Thompson, and Ellis Arnall, who is like the outgoing governor. Because the legislature didnt necessarily get along entirely with Eugene Talmadge. The legislature, they sorted this out by getting drunk, because thats how they do things in Georgia. [Laughs.]

Quite literally, they had quorum trouble in the legislature as they were trying to sort this out, because there were too many people passed out in the anterooms. This isnt like 1820. This is 1946! People are alive who saw this and remember it.

RG: [Laughs.] Right.

GC: This sort of backroom struggle for power, I think it informs to some degree, the sort of craziness that were looking at today in Georgia.

Newscaster: Senators Perdue and Loeffler issued a joint statement calling for the resignation of Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger over alleged failures in the election process

GC: because he is unwilling to just set aside the election and decertify it in order to assign delegates to Trump. Theres a history here of backroom, double dealing, whatever it takes to hold on to power. Because theres a fundamental skepticism of democracy baked in, because of all of the effort that had been made to ensure that African-American voters were never able to exercise political power again.

RG: Right. That this is how its done in Georgia. Its been done this way before and theyre just trying to do it again.

GC: I want to say today that weve unwound a lot of that. I really think we do. But the DNA of that attitude is still baked into the political culture of Georgia. Like weve overcome it because of massive demographic change, and a tremendous increase in education. But politics are hereditary. Like I still argue with Herman Talmadges grandson on Facebook, and Herman Talmadges grandson both remembers all of this stuff, and is an advocate for it. Like, its still there, like, and I think its important that we talk through this stuff, so that people who are new to Georgia, and new to politics around here, really get where all of this is coming from.

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A Political History of Georgia - The Intercept