The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Greg Bluestein reports that freshman Democratic Rep. Lucy McBath is considering running in next year’s special election to succeed Georgia Sen. Johnny Isakson, a Republican who will resign at the end of 2019.
Last year, McBath won an upset victory for the 6th Congressional District by unseating GOP incumbent Karen Handel 50-49. Handel and several other Republicans are running to try and retake this ancestrally red seat, and Bluestein writes that some state and national Democrats want McBath to seek re-election in her competitive district rather than enter the Senate race.
A number of other Peach State Democrats are publicly or privately considering running, and Bluestein lists DeKalb County Chief Executive Michael Thurmond as another local politician who has been “kicking the tires.” Thurmond was elected state labor commissioner back in 1998, which made him one of the first two African Americans to win a statewide race in Georgia. (Thurbert Baker also made history that day when he was elected state attorney general.)
Thurmond gave up his post in 2010 to challenge Isakson, but his campaign didn’t attract much national attention in a cycle where Senate Democrats had to defend a host of vulnerable seats. Thurmond lost 58-39, but his career rebounded in 2016 when he was elected to lead DeKalb County, a large and heavily Democratic constituency in the Atlanta area. Back in July, Thurmond sounded very unlikely to run in the regularly scheduled election to take on GOP Sen. David Perdue.
Bluestein also writes that some state Democrats are encouraging the Rev. Raphael Warnock to run. Warnock is the pastor of the famous Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where Martin Luther King Jr. once held the pulpit. Warnock, who is also a voting rights advocate, considered challenging Isakson in the 2016 cycle, but ended up passing on what was very much a longshot race. Earlier this year there were reports that Warnock was considering running against Perdue, but while he never publicly ruled anything out, his allies told the AJC back in April that he was unlikely to get in.
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