Cobb GOP says they're back after Seabaugh win

Jul. 15—The day after Devan Seabaugh clinched the race for Georgia's 34th House District, Cobb GOP Chair Salleigh Grubbs was feeling her oats.

"I am thrilled over the victory of ... my friend, Devan Seabaugh," she said in a Facebook post. "It was a key turning point for Cobb County."

Grubbs continued, "We are awake. We are preparing. Gone are the days of being sideline watchers or just writing a check. The conservative citizens of Cobb County are ready to defend our ballots and our county."

Joining Grubbs on the victory lap was former U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler and her Greater Georgia organization, which shot off a press release commending the "strong conservative win" within an hour of Seabaugh declaring himself winner.

The jubilation of Cobb's right speaks to how Tuesday's results—Seabaugh easily defeated Democrat Priscilla Smith with nearly 63% of the vote—have breathed new life into a local party organization which was on the ropes just six months ago. Coming back from the "disaster," in Grubbs' words, of the November and January elections, the Cobb GOP contends the reports of its demise have been greatly exaggerated.

Stopping the bleeding

As with the state and county in which it lies, House District 34—once crimson-red—has steadily trended blue in recent cycles. The district which just five years ago went to then-Representative Bert Reeves by nearly two thirds saw, by last November, Reeves winning only 56% of the vote against Smith.

That trend was stopped dead in its tracks this week. Seabaugh in fact improved on the GOP's margins from the first voting round in June's "jungle primary" when he and fellow Republican David Blinkhorn combined for over 61% of the vote. One observer found the outcome about as he expected.

"Look—it's a Republican district," said Kerwin Swint, a political scientist at Kennesaw State University. "It would be an uphill struggle for the Democratic side ... they could not have reasonably hoped to win that seat, though I don't think they expected the thrashing that they got."

Brian Robinson, a former aide to Gov. Nathan Deal, credited the strong showing to the natural ebb and flow of the partisan tides. November and January, he said, may well have been a "wake-up call" for Republican activists.

"There's usually a reaction, a pendulum swing, when one party is in the White House," Robinson said. "Democrats had a lot of things going their way (in 2020). Their turnout machine was on full blast ... now that they're in power and control all the branches of Washington, it could mean that Democrats are fat and happy."

Swint, meanwhile, pointed to an unusually strong turnout in the runoff—up to 21% from June 15's 17%—as a key factor.

"It's a funny thing, the last several years we've seen unusually high runoff turnout, really going back to the Ossoff-Handel runoff," Swint added. "The only thing I can attribute it to is the heightened attention, interest, polarization, and motivation that a lot of voters are feeling."

Outside influence

Those factors Swint named—attention, motivation—were helped in no small part by the involvement of two major outside political groups in the race.

Loeffler, fresh off her defeat at the hands of Rev. Raphael Warnock in January, took the race as a coming-out party for her Greater Georgia group. The former senator pounded pavement and held events with the Cobb GOP, drumming up interest in a previously under-the-radar race. And when Seabaugh cruised to victory, Greater Georgia was eager to share the credit.

The group said Tuesday it contacted 8,687 voters with a team of nearly 50 volunteers in the months leading up to the election. It cut ads attacking national Democrats and Stacey Abrams for Georgia's loss of the MLB All-Star Game. And as of the week before Election Day, a spokesperson for the group said Greater Georgia had dropped over $100,000 to help elect a Republican.

"From the outset of this special election, Greater Georgia began organizing a mass-mobilization effort to help build awareness and get out the vote," Loeffler said in a statement. "Between our registration and voter outreach efforts, we engaged thousands of voters to help successfully defend this seat."

Fair Fight Action, meanwhile, lined up squarely behind Smith in late May. Abrams recorded a video in support of the candidate, and the group promoted the race heavily on social media. Campaign finance records filed before the June election show the group spent around $1,800 on staff time and phone banking for Smith's campaign.

"Do it for me. Do it for yourself. Do it for your kids. Do it for @staceyabrams! No matter why you do it — vote!" Smith wrote on Twitter, tying her candidacy to that of Georgia's Democratic standard-bearer.

Fair Fight did not respond to multiple interview requests from the MDJ in the weeks before the election, but the group was quick to downplay the results in the aftermath of Smith's defeat.

"Tonight, Georgia Republicans won a Republican district, just like Georgia Democrats will continue to win our Democratic state," read a statement from Lauren Groh-Wargo, Fair Fight's CEO.

"While the Republican spin factory kicks into high gear this evening, they continue running scared of the voters of color across the state who defeated them last November and again in January," she added.

When the final fundraising deadline before the runoff arrived on July 9, Seabaugh reported raising over $129,000 in hard cash. Smith, meanwhile, had raised around $71,500.

Bellwether or bust?

What Tuesday night means for the future of the GOP, particularly in Cobb, is predictably another partisan litmus test.

Grubbs told the MDJ Thursday the result was a clear repudiation of the Democrats' embrace of its left wing (her counterpart in the Cobb Democratic Party, Jacquelyn Bettadapur, did not immediately respond to a request for comment). Pity, she said, the opposition had not nominated Sam Hensley Jr., the Marietta attorney who earned less than 15% of the vote last month.

"Gone are the days of the moderate Democratic Party, and I think Democrats need to know that," Grubbs said.

Swint and Robinson both agreed the race could—maybe—be a good sign for Republicans heading into the 2022 midterms.

"I don't know if it's a bellwether exactly, but ... going into 2022, Republicans are expected to pick up seats in the House nationally. And with redistricting, they certainly have a chance to do well in the state. And I think they're looking for any opportunity they can find to spike the football and say Republicans are back," Swint said.

"You can definitely read this as a positive indicator for Republicans going into '22," Robinson said. "Now, granted, there's a lot of things that could go wrong. We could destroy ourselves with infighting, which we're certainly going to try to do."

But in Cobb? Robinson said that ship has sailed.

"Look, it's great partisan rhetoric. It's what the party should be saying, it's good cheerleading. But the Democratic nominee for governor is going to win Cobb County next year. This doesn't change that," he said.

State Rep. Erick Allen, D-Smyrna, will be entering his second session as chair of the Cobb delegation next year, and said he'd already spoken with his new colleague Seabaugh. But the 34th district results, he added, won't be keeping him up at night.

"I'm not sure why the big celebration," Allen told the MDJ. "They held the seat that was drawn for them to have. So I don't get why this is a signal that they're back."