Democrats look to rise again in the South

Republicans have dominated Southern politics for more than a generation, but that supremacy is being challenged in this year’s midterms. Democratic candidates are making an unexpectedly strong push for Senate seats in places like South Carolina and Mississippi, putting the GOP on defense.

Driven by a ‘backlash’

Democrats’ “stealthy advance into the South” during the midterms “could end up being the story of the year,” said Damian Paletta at The Wall Street Journal. The GOP’s concern can be seen in President Donald Trump’s appearances in states like South Carolina and Texas to campaign for handpicked candidates like Darlene Graham and Ken Paxton, who find themselves in toss-up races. Those are locales that national Republicans usually get to take for granted. “What. On. Earth. Is. Going. On?”

Republicans may be a victim of their own success. Early voting in Southern states is being driven by a “backlash” against last spring’s Trump-led effort — enabled by April’s Supreme Court decision undermining the Voting Rights Act — to “gerrymander Black voters” into GOP-dominated congressional districts, said Bloomberg.

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Florida’s Black voters are casting in-person early ballots in double the numbers they did in 2022. Similar trends have been observed in North Carolina and Georgia. That Black voter anger could “fuel a Democratic turnout advantage” that decides races “throughout the South, from North Carolina to Texas,” said Bloomberg.

“America’s new political battleground is the South,” said Carolyn Hugley and Lauren Groh-Wargo at Democracy Docket. The gerrymandering push compelled Democratic organizers to “mobilize quickly” and “force politicians to reconsider what they believed they could get away with.” The fight for “fair representation for Black Americans” is inseparable from efforts to “break the GOP’s stranglehold on the region.”

‘Barely enough’

Some leaders worry Democrats were unprepared for this opportunity. The party “made mistakes in not investing earlier” in races across the South, said Gov. Wes Moore (D-Md.) on ABC’s “This Week.” Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) agrees. Democrats have done “barely enough” to win the region, he said to MS NOW. The party cannot afford to write off voters south of the Mason-Dixon Line. “As goes the South, so goes the nation.”