SAVANNAH, Ga. – Nearly 50 years ago, every congressman from the Deep South was a white Democrat.
Now the U.S. House has just one white Democrat from the five states that comprise the region: Georgia’s John Barrow.
Barrow last year survived the Republican tide that wiped out 20 white Democratic members of Congress from the across the South, yet his toughest battle may lie ahead. New political maps approved by the Republican-controlled Georgia Legislature leave him politically homeless, placing his residence outside the 12th District that he represents and stripping away the base of his Democratic support – largely African-American – along the coast.
His precarious fate raises a larger question: Can white Democrats chart a course back in the Deep South – Georgia, Mississippi. Alabama, Louisiana and South Carolina – where they were once as plentiful as sweet tea on a hot summer day? Or will the party that once dominated the Bible Belt become reliant almost exclusively on black urban voters, leaving the region even more racially polarized?
“For the Democratic Party to be defined by race means that it’s politically marginalized,” said Merle Black, an Emory University political science professor and author of “The Rise of Southern Republicans.”