While accepting the endorsement of a group called Veterans for Trump, Stacy Skinner talked about how she got into politics because Democrats were “starting to make inroads at the local level.”
Former President Donald Trump and other national Republicans often warn about Chinese power grabs or people crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. Skinner is running for re-election to the city council of Johns Creek, an Atlanta suburb with a population of about 85,000.
But the 44-year-old doesn’t openly promote her Trump association, only telling curious voters in this Republican-leaning enclave that she’s “conservative.” Meanwhile, Skinner’s opponent, Devon Dabney, faces questions about whether he is a Democrat.
Ahead of the 2024 presidential election, the dynamics in Johns Creek and other nearby Atlanta suburbs reflect how partisan and cultural divisions that have deepened since Trump’s 2016 candidacy have affected local campaigns. Some activists and voters now see these nominally nonpartisan contests as crucial fronts in shaping the nation’s identity.
“People have a right to know who they are voting for,” said Betsy Kramer, a Republican Party volunteer who is supporting Skinner in Johns Creek, which is about 30 miles north of downtown Atlanta in Fulton County. “I’m not voting for a Democrat,” Kramer said. “I worry that the entire region will change dramatically if Democrats start taking over north Fulton.”
The suburbs of Georgia’s largest city were once the base of the state’s Republican establishment. Today, they play an important role in determining the results of statewide races. In 2020, they were crucial to Democrat Joe Biden’s narrow victory over Republican incumbent Trump in the presidential election.
This part of the metro area has become more demographically and politically diverse in recent decades, with growth in the Asian American, black and Hispanic populations helping to boost the Democratic vote. The share of Georgia residents who identify as white and non-Hispanic fell to 50.1% in the last census, the lowest level on record.
Furthermore, some Republicans who still make up the majority of voters in North Fulton County have never marched in lockstep with Trump and the Tea Party, a movement that opposes the Washington political establishment and espouses a conservative and libertarian philosophy. In 2020, Trump fell short of Republicans’ historic advantages in the region, losing Georgia by fewer than 12,000 votes out of 5 million cast. And the region once elected Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state who scuttled Trump’s efforts to reverse his defeat, to the state Senate.
Raffensperger and Governor. Brian Kemp received strong support here with his comfortable re-election victories last year, despite strong criticism from Trump for disagreeing with his attempt to overturn the election. Trump’s efforts are now at the center of a racketeering indictment in Fulton County.
The national undercurrents do not mean that the usual list of hot topics in town halls has changed. It’s still mostly zoning and other development rules; sales tax and property mileage rates; and how to best provide services such as public safety, fire protection and garbage collection. But as partisan influence grows, candidates and voters are talking about old, familiar debates in different ways.
“We see this nationalization everywhere, especially in school board elections, but also in cities,” said Sarah Reckhow, a professor at Michigan State University who tracks American election trends.
Reckhow pointed to several variables: the gutting of local journalism, meaning voters hear mostly about national politics; Voters demand to focus more on cultural hot buttons than traditional local politics; and low voter turnout, which increases the power of the most engaged and partisan citizens.
“This creates a cycle,” she said, in which voter preferences, media narratives and politician rhetoric become “somehow reinforcing.”
The new situation may explain why Skinner is cautious about Trump and how she and Dabney are careful about their partisan preferences.
“President Trump is obviously divisive,” Skinner said in an interview, emphasizing that the support was “about the veterans” and not Trump himself. “Everything has become more divisive than I think it needs to be.”
Dabney, a black woman, still sees herself as a target. She complains that it is, as she says, a “whisper campaign” that portrays her as a threat to Johns Creek’s identity based on her voting history.
She acknowledged that she received door knocking and other help from grassroots progressive groups in Johns Creek and Democratic activists elsewhere, but said she came only after she was attacked by Republicans.
“My parents were involved in the civil rights movement,” she said. “It’s no secret that most black people have voted for Democrats since then.”
But “this is a nonpartisan election,” she said. “It shouldn’t matter.”
The new intensity is particularly clear in development discussions, which are mostly about the “densified” development of apartments and condominiums.
In U.S. suburbs that thrived after World War II and through the civil rights movement as places for middle-class and upper-middle-class whites, zoning has long been controversial as a way to create distinct communities caught between rural America’s economic challenges and racial problems and ethnic diversity of major cities, including Atlanta.
Now these zoning issues are a flashpoint in partisan politics. They are reflected in national rhetoric, such as Trump’s call to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, arguments over liberal “sanctuary cities,” and tighter federal restrictions on legal immigration.
“I don’t want our city to become a hellhole. I don’t want to become Atlanta,” said Kramer, the Johns Creek Republican. She associated Georgia’s capital with “crime” and “riffraff,” similar to how Trump once disparaged Atlanta as “crime-ridden” and “falling apart.”
Atlanta’s population is 48% black and 41% white. Johns Creek is approximately 52% non-Hispanic white. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Asians make up about a quarter of the population and black residents make up about a tenth.
“Some of them are my very good friends,” Kramer said of Johns Creek’s many nonwhite residents. But the white Boston native, who moved to Georgia decades ago, argued that putting more Democrats in local offices would guarantee housing policies that would “change the demographics.”
“I want everyone who can afford it to live in our city,” she said. “We live in a high-rent area and I would like to keep it that way. “I’m not trying to keep anyone out.”
In nearby Roswell, City Council candidate Jason Miller said the “high-density” debate resulted in an apparent battle between “two candidates.”
Miller, who moved to Roswell from Atlanta with her husband, is one of the candidates who doesn’t want to give developers a free hand in high-density housing projects. He wants to focus on business development first.
“I want us to move forward with purpose … so that we give more Roswell residents the opportunity to work closer to home rather than being a bedroom community that feeds Atlanta and other suburbs,” he said. “I’m all about increasing density as long as we do it wisely.”
But others running in Roswell talk about development in the context of partisan control.
“On the other hand, it’s about attracting new voters,” said candidate Allen Sells, a self-described conservative, at a recent event for several council candidates. “That’s what they’re all about.”
Miller, who described himself as a left-leaning independent, said the atmosphere left him feeling miscast, with some voters associating him with “extreme right-wing people” and some conservatives considering him a “socialist.”
He described his voting history as “mostly Democratic, but a lot of Republican,” but said some voters wanted to know his specific candidate choices and sought his opinion on issues that rarely, if ever, come before city government.
“I have received emails and questions from constituents asking about my stance on abortion,” he said. “It’s bizarre,” Miller lamented, how the partisan mindset “permeates all the way to local elections.”
In fact, at the meeting where Miller and Sells spoke, the biggest cheers of the evening came at the introduction of other local elected officials. The crowd roared at the mention of Fulton County Commissioner Bridget Thorne, an outspoken conservative who won her seat after spreading the lie that widespread voter fraud tainted Georgia’s 2020 election.
At Johns Creek, in the only event where Dabney and Skinner were on the same stage, they laid out essentially the same development approach and said they would stick to the city’s existing master plan. Skinner called it “responsible development” that allows for residential and commercial growth. Dabney later regretted that his current positions on issues had been pushed into the background.
“I was always popular in the community,” she said. But when she launched her campaign, “she said, ‘Well, she’s this Democrat.'” She’s going to provide density and affordable housing. “…This should be about what’s right for our community.”
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