It’s been a few years in Georgia politics. We started with a sitting president up for re-election and an indicted former president – and guess which one won the election?
Democrats raised millions but mostly fizzled, while Republicans defied expectations and built a turnout machine that few saw coming.
In a year marked by a dizzying array of highs and lows, I decided a Santa-themed prize was meant to rank the highs and lows on Christmas Day. Cookie winners are recognized for their outstanding achievements in governance or simple political survival. The lumps of coal are for those who Santa thinks should make better choices.
And the Cookies go to:
- Election workers in Georgia. Four years after a contested election that included death threats against county poll workers, state election officials were back at it again on election night in 2024. Despite bomb threats, last-minute rule changes , 14-hour days and relentless scrutiny leading to When the votes were counted, Georgians had a generally smooth vote and a clear presidential result before midnight.
- Kelly Loeffler and the Georgia Republicans. I caught up with Loeffler a few months after her 2021 Senate election loss to U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock. Instead of returning to her and her husband’s successful business, she wanted to stay in the political world that had essentially just rejected her and create an infrastructure that she felt was lacking when she ran. True to her plan, she spent millions of her own money to create a statewide political operation that helped statewide Republicans deliver Donald Trump’s victory in Georgia this year. The reward? A nomination for a position in Trump’s cabinet and plenty of favors for his fellow Republicans to call in later.
- Mayor André Dickens. Just six months ago, Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens was embroiled in a water crisis he didn’t cause – and a communications crisis of his own. his own creation when he stayed out of town as pipes burst across town. Add to that the battles he endured over the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, and Dickens seemed beleaguered and beleaguered. Now that the year is ending, the a training center is builtthe water has continued to flow (so far) and Dickens is heading into an election year of 2025 with no obvious challenger in sight.
- President Jimmy Carter. There is political survival and real survival, and Georgian President Jimmy Carter embodied the latter. The Plains president turned 100 in September, voted for Vice President Kamala Harris in October and continues to inspire people around the world with his example of long-term service.
- Herschel Walker. After a truly disastrous election loss to U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock in 2022, the former University of Georgia superstar all but disappeared from public life. But a year and a half later, Walker quietly returned to Athens to finish college at age 62, proving this month that it’s never too late to take care of unfinished business. With his diploma in hand, he is now appointed Trump’s ambassador to the Bahamas.
The political year was also marked by many weak points. And the 2024 lumps of coal go to:
- President Joe Biden. The aging president who promised to be a “transitional” leader in 2020 didn’t help transition the White House to Trump until 2024. Although Democrats insisted Biden was perfectly fine and was ready for another four years, the president’s faltering and confused performance in the Atlanta debate phase showed that was not the case at all. Democrats’ last-minute swap for Vice President Kamala Harris denied voters a real primary race — and gave the country the second Trump presidency that Biden had always warned against.
- The Georgia State Board of Elections. Never has the secretive, unelected State Board of Elections wreaked as much havoc as it did this fall after Trump greeted his new GOP activist majority by name at a rally in Georgia. “pit bulls fighting for honesty, transparency and victory” then adopted a series of sweeping, last-minute changes to voting rules that forced election directors to adapt. The justices ultimately struck down the most far-reaching rules, saying the board must remain in its way, but chaos and disagreements between council members remained.
- Georgia Democrats. Is Georgia really a swing state? Democrats in the state point to higher vote totals than 2020 and two House elections as proof that the 2024 elections weren’t so bad after all. But with a near-total wipeout of the state in 2022 and Trump winning this year, Democrats have a lot of work to do — not just to prove Georgia is a swing state, but to actually make it one in the first place .
- Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. What a year for Willis, who started out as something of a MSNBC Superheroes for indicting Trump in a massive election interference case in Georgia, only to be disqualified from the case for having a secret romantic relationship with the special counsel she hired for the job. Weeks before the Trump case collapsed in December, Willis’ other major racketeering case, against rapper Young Thug and a network of associates, also collapsed. The judge in the case criticized Fulton County’s “very bad lawyer” and legal experts called the criminal trial the longest in Georgia history. a waste of time.
- Fulton County Jail Leaders. You would think that after court cases, federal investigations, and state investigations all revealed inhumane and unconstitutional conditions in the Fulton County Jail, someone somewhere in leadership would start to really address the problem . But you would be wrong. County leaders say they need more money, a lotbut one Report from the Department of Justice said money alone won’t fix what he calls a culture of mismanagement and mistreatment. The prison now appears to need input from local, state and federal officials into a solution. Maybe first president to be reserved there will be able to get the ball rolling once he is sworn in in January.
Congratulations to the Cookie winners and commiserations to those who won lumps of coal. Fortunately, with 2025 on the horizon, we can all decide to do better next year.
Credit: AP
Credit: AP