Georgia’s center of political gravity is shifting toward Atlanta. Why it matters.

“This is probably just the culmination, not the start or even the middle of a shift,” said Steve Anthony, a longtime deputy of the late Georgia House Speaker Tom Murphy and a Georgia State University lecturer.

The nominees for other top offices are embedded in the region, too. Both parties’ contenders for lieutenant governor, attorney general and secretary of state hail from Atlanta or its outskirts.

It continues a geographic trend that accelerated in 2021 when Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock both flipped U.S. Senate seats, marking only the second time since World War II that both of Georgia’s senators lived in metro Atlanta.

This year’s elections will put metro Atlanta even more squarely at the center of Georgia politics, with its deep-blue core anchoring the Democratic coalition and its populous suburbs still essential terrain for both parties.

That has profound implications for rural Georgia, where leaders represent a shrinking share of the state’s population and have diminishing clout to shape political debates.

But the power shift doesn’t necessarily translate into an overwhelming advantage for Democrats. Even as Cobb and Gwinnett counties have transformed into reliably Democratic territory in the last decade, they are still home to some of Georgia’s richest troves of GOP votes. And suburban voters have repeatedly been willing to split their votes between the parties.

“If you think it’s a slam dunk for Democrats, think again,” said Rick Dent, a political strategist who has worked for Democrats and Republicans. “That makes metro Atlanta and its suburbs the ultimate political battleground in Georgia, where neither party can take the region, or its voters, for granted.”

Losing influence

For much of the 20th century, Statehouse clout was embedded in rural Georgia.

The county-unit system magnified the influence of sparsely populated counties and helped propel statewide leaders and family dynasties from places far outside Atlanta’s orbit. Even after Republicans took control of state government, rural Georgia dominated the Statehouse’s power structure.

Credit: Jennifer Brett

Credit: Jennifer Brett

While metro Atlanta politicians gained a bigger foothold in recent years, the GOP’s top brass is anchored elsewhere. Gov. Brian Kemp lives just outside of Athens, while Lt. Gov. Burt Jones hails from the Middle Georgia town of Jackson.

This year’s race breaks from that mold. Bottoms was raised on Atlanta’s Westside, where her mother owned a beauty parlor and her father was an R&B legend. Jackson spent part of a turbulent childhood in Atlanta’s Techwood Homes before entering foster care and eventually building a multibillion-dollar healthcare empire north of the city.

A state government led by politicians steeped in metro Atlanta’s concerns would bring firsthand experience of the region’s pressures, from traffic-choked infrastructure to the shrinking stock of affordable housing.

Even their competing visions of Atlanta have played out on the campaign trail. Bottoms chronicled her family’s generations-long connection to the city in her memoir. Jackson has emphasized his own childhood in attack ads, saying: “Keisha, I grew up in the projects you abandoned.”

Jackson’s declaration at a Georgia Chamber luncheon that he wouldn’t seek a state takeover of Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport took a major fear off the table for city officials and business honchos. Bottoms, meanwhile, has pledged to establish a dedicated state funding stream for the MARTA transit system, challenging another longstanding political norm.

The geography also cuts both ways. Jackson is making Bottoms’ record as mayor a defining argument of the campaign. And she is chastising him over his support for data center projects that have sparked backlash across big cities and small communities.

Both cannot win without deep support in the region.

“The suburban voters feel more important than ever,” said Republican Insurance Commissioner John King, who was an Atlanta Police Department officer and Doraville police chief before Kemp tapped him to the post. “And showing up there counts.”

That reflects a broader demographic trend. Emory University political scientist Alan Abramowitz noted that metro Atlanta now encompasses almost 60% of Georgia’s population, compared with roughly 30% in 1960.

“Rural and small-town Georgia is losing population and losing political influence,” he said. “And that decline would be accelerated if Democrats take over.”

A few hundred steps

It also could reshape one of the oldest sources of friction in Georgia politics: the uneasy coexistence between Atlanta City Hall and the Statehouse.

No Atlanta mayor has ever been elected governor, though the distance between the two centers of power is roughly a few hundred steps along the same downtown street.

That city-state tension endured for a reason. For generations, politicians from both parties understood there was a political reward in running against “Atlanta.”

In the 1960s, the toxic relationship between Atlanta Mayor Ivan Allen and Gov. Lester Maddox spilled into the larger battle over civil rights. The divide was never more vivid than during Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1968 funeral, when Maddox deployed state troopers around the Capitol as Allen ordered City Hall draped in black.

More than a half-century later, Bottoms had her own turbulent relationship with Kemp. The two feuded over pandemic restrictions, a spike in violent crime and the racial justice protests that convulsed Atlanta in 2020.

Other city-state pairings were cozier.

In the 1970s, Mayor Sam Massell fought to repair the bitter relationship. When lawmakers cleared the way for local funding of MARTA, Massell famously buried a hatchet outside City Hall.

Republican Gov. Nathan Deal and Mayor Kasim Reed forged a partnership in the 2010s that became the toast of Atlanta’s business community.

Credit: Jim Galloway

Credit: Jim Galloway

And even Bottoms and Kemp found common ground, working together on transportation and economic development. She recently told the AJC’s “Politically Georgia” podcast her first call if she wins would be to Kemp.

“We actually got things done,” Bottoms said. “That didn’t always make headlines because it wasn’t as salacious as when we fought.”

‘We can’t be ignored’

The shift does not mean rural Georgia no longer matters.

House Speaker Jon Burns, who hails from small-town Newington in southeast Georgia, will likely remain as one of the state’s central powerbrokers no matter who wins.

And rural Republicans will still hold key posts elsewhere in state government and throughout the Legislature, where lawmakers far from metro Atlanta control powerful committees and the state’s purse strings.

“Agriculture is still our biggest industry, and that means rural Georgia will always have a voice,” said former state Sen. Fran Millar, a Dunwoody Republican whose 2018 defeat became one marker of the GOP’s erosion in Atlanta’s suburbs. “I don’t see a shift as anything dramatic. It was inevitable. It’s where the people are.”

The campaigns themselves show why rural Georgia still matters. Some of Bottoms’ weakest performances in the primary came in metro Atlanta; she won the party’s nomination because she led in 158 of Georgia’s 159 counties.

And Jackson is now shoring up his support beyond metro Atlanta, where he built much of his strength against Jones during a bitter primary.

He’s made repeated trips to rural parts of the state, including a weekend visit to Franklin Springs with Georgia GOP Chair Josh McKoon.

State Senate Agriculture Committee Chair Russ Goodman, a South Georgia farmer and one of the Legislature’s leading rural voices, worries about the changing balance of power.

Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC

Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC

“I’ve been blessed that I’ve had support here from both sides of the aisle, from metro and rural areas. But you can never count on it,” said the Republican.

“We can’t be ignored. And we all pull in the same direction from this part of Georgia, so we tend to punch above our weight,” he added.

“All we can do is hope that we can continue to bring jobs and investment here.”