We’re at a frustrating point in the calendar for those who work elections. Primaries who will decide who voters will choose from will be held in seven months. The political news cycle is dominated by national news and officials. Voters find it increasingly difficult to tune in to state and local elections. Those same yet to be interested voters will mostly shut down their political attention span in a couple of weeks for the holidays.

It's frustrating to candidates and their teams because most have been running – officially or unofficially – for well over a year. They’ve been doing mostly inside baseball stuff. By Thanksgiving, candidates will need to have tapped their large donors and have the leaders of the grassroots teams identified.  

For current elected officials running for statewide office, the fundraising piece is especially important. These individuals aren’t able to raise money for their campaign accounts while the state legislature is in session, which begins in early January.  By the time the legislature gavels out sine die in around the April Masters’ first tee times, there will be but five or six weeks of the primary campaign left.  Most major campaign spending plans will be set by then, based on money largely raised by the end of this year.

So clearly a lot of work has been done to decide who will be the nominees for a new Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Attorney General, and Secretary of State. Republicans will also be choosing a challenger to Democratic incumbent Senator Jon Ossoff. 

The frustrating parts for those seeking a nomination comes from current polls. After years of positioning themselves for this race, public polling available for the Republican nominations for Governor, Lieutenant Governor, and U.S. Senate shows “undecided” winning handily.  There is no consensus candidate for any of those nominations as of yet.

With relatively crowded fields for each of those three races, it can be safe to assume each candidate is preparing for if not outright expecting a runoff and corresponding strategy. Candidates will be testing to see if other potential top vote getting candidates have a ceiling on their support – and what negatives trigger and reinforce negative perceptions of these candidates. 

The tradition of runoffs in Georgia indicates they are frequent, expensive, and sometimes a bit fierce. That’s a nice way of saying things can get nasty.

This year, this strategy will be largely a bipartisan exercise. Democrats are emboldened after their court imposed off year Public Service Commission elections. They have many candidates fighting to keep their base energized using resistance to President Trump as their uniting force.  

That whole “uniting” thing will take a back seat for both parties from January through the end of runoffs.  All will be fighting to be the standard bearers of parties that will be quite different when the ultimate winners are sworn in in January of 2027.

Much of the “fight” will be predicable noise.  Who is left standing – and the directions they wish to take Georgia and the country, might be a bit different than the status quo, regardless of which party wins.

The “base” of each party always wants to pull their leaders toward their core and away from the center.  Whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican, the enemy in a primary is anyone who can be branded a “moderate”, or any position that can be labeled as such.

Democrats in Georgia have an almost unlimited amount of out of state cash that can be tapped. National Democratic partisan positions often come attached to that money. That’s not to say these positions do not represent the views of today’s Georgia Democrats. For all the ink that has been spilled about Republicans moving further right, little from our local press is directed at the truth that today’s Georgia Democrats are proudly and unapologetically progressive.

On the Republican side, there is still a bit of a battle over the future vision for the party. Governor Kemp has done a masterful job of maintaining a coalition of Reagan-Isakson Republicans with Trump-MAGA loyalists.  Building a majority is often about maintaining and growing a coalition.

The danger for Republicans in this likely divisive primary and runoff cycle is that these factions confuse winning a primary with winning a general election in a winner take all exercise. There is no victory in winning the primary battle then losing the general election war.

As we enter the season where the final preparations are made to turn a campaign into the retail voter phase, Republicans are the ones with the most to lose. Those setting their strategies now need to include that calculation into their expected costs to win.