Georgia Stays Red
- By Emily TamkinEmily Tamkin is a staff writer at Foreign Policy. She writes for FP’s The Cable, a real-time take on the news in Washington and the wider world. She has been at FP since the fall of 2016, before which she was an associate editor at New America, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington. She has a B.A. in Russian literature from Columbia University, an M.Phil. in Russian and East European studies from the University of Oxford, and studied Soviet dissidence in archival centers in Moscow, Tbilisi, and, on a Fulbright, in Bremen — all of which means that at FP, she writes when she can on Russia and Central and Eastern Europe.
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If you take the midnight train to Georgia, you’ll still be going to a red state.
The state tossed its 16 electoral votes behind Republican Donald Trump — and kept Sen. Johnny Isakson working in Washington.
As Foreign Policy reported back in October, Isakson, the chair of the Senate committees on veterans issues and lawmakers’ ethics, is known for his hawkish stance in matters of defense. His positions weren’t shared by Trump, whom he nevertheless consistently supported. Democrats hoped they might turn Georgia blue by courting women, black, and Hispanic voters.
Millionaire challenger Jim Barksdale, however, turned out not to be the man to help with that particular plan. After losing many a campaign staffer just weeks before the voters went to cast their ballots, the Democratic Senate hopeful lost the race, and, with the presidential election, Georgia remained red.
Photo credit: Jessica McGowan/Getty Images
