By Chris Joyner
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
1:21 p.m. Saturday, January 1, 2011


Georgia Democrats enter the upcoming 2011 session of the General Assembly reeling from a series of defections and facing an uphill climb toward relevance.

The once-dominant party holds 85 of 236 seats in the House and Senate, Democrats’ lowest ebb since Reconstruction. And the number has been slipping.

Since the November election when the party lost control of all statewide offices, nine Democratic legislators have become Republicans, including Athens Rep. Doug McKillip, who switched less than a month after his colleagues elected him chairman of the House Democrats.

Now party leaders are scrambling to find new growth strategies while attempting to be more than a speed bump for the Republican majority.

The task is daunting. Mirroring a trend across the South, much of the state party’s white, rural base has fled to the Republican Party and Democrats have struggled to find attractive candidates for statewide posts they held for generations.

Newly elected House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams, D-Atlanta, admits her party’s primary function in the short term will be as a check on the Republican majority’s power. Beyond that, she said her challenge is to make the Democrats’ message of job creation, transportation improvements and better schools “rigorously clearâ€