History
For over a century, the Democratic Party dominated Georgia state and local politics. From 1872 to 2002, the Democratic Party controlled the Governor's Mansion, both houses of the state legislature and most statewide offices.
The Civil Right Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 revolutionized Georgia society and politics, but change outside Atlanta proved slow. Black voters soon liberalized Georgia's Democratic Party. After the election of Andrew Young, the first African-American mayor of Atlanta and Julian Bond to the Georgia House of Representatives, many white-supremacy democrats defected to the Georgia Republican Party.
After switching to the Republican Party in 1998, Sonny Perdue went on to defeat Democrat Roy Barnes in the 2002 gubernatorial election. Perdue's unexpected victory marked the beginning of a decline for the Democratic Party of Georgia.
Georgia House Speaker Tom Murphy, the longest serving Speaker in any state legislature, lost his bid for another term in the state House. Four Democrats in the Georgia State Senate changed their political affiliation, handing the upper house to the GOP. And in 2004, the Democratic Party lost control of the Georgia House of Representatives, putting the party in the minority for the first time in Georgia history.
The Democratic Party of Georgia entered the 2010 elections with hopes that former Governor Roy Barnes could win back the Governor's Mansion. Polls showed a tight race between Barnes and Republican gubernatorial nominee Nathan Deal., with some predicting a runoff election However, on election day, Republicans won every statewide office.
Read more about this topic: Democratic Party Of Georgia
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“There is a constant in the average American imagination and taste, for which the past must be preserved and celebrated in full-scale authentic copy; a philosophy of immortality as duplication. It dominates the relation with the self, with the past, not infrequently with the present, always with History and, even, with the European tradition.”
—Umberto Eco (b. 1932)
“History has neither the venerableness of antiquity, nor the freshness of the modern. It does as if it would go to the beginning of things, which natural history might with reason assume to do; but consider the Universal History, and then tell us,—when did burdock and plantain sprout first?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“All history attests that man has subjected woman to his will, used her as a means to promote his selfish gratification, to minister to his sensual pleasures, to be instrumental in promoting his comfort; but never has he desired to elevate her to that rank she was created to fill. He has done all he could to debase and enslave her mind; and now he looks triumphantly on the ruin he has wrought, and say, the being he has thus deeply injured is his inferior.”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)