By Elliott Brack, editor and publisher | The United States is a great nation. It is resilient, and can survive Donald Trump. Be pleased and calmed knowing that.
The nation’s best period of government, it appears to us, is when Congress doesn’t necessarily rubber stamp everything the president sends forth. (The very best time we feel is when one House of Congress is of a different party than the president.) We suspect it won’t be long before the legislators find that they’ll need to limit the reach of the presidency. That would also have happened had another person been chosen to lead our country.
What this country now shows the rest of the world is that our mechanism for changing our governmental leaders works. That should curtail some of the suggestions from other worlds that our country’s election system was broken.
THE BIG NEWS out of Gwinnett in this election is that this county is moving faster toward parity in politics. You may remember that GwinnettForum’s very first of its Continuing Objectives for Gwinnett County is: “Development of a two-party system for county offices.” (See other Objectives at column on the right.)
In race-after-race in this year’s election, local Democrats gave Republicans a good challenge, for both county commission seats and in statehouse races. The Democrats this year fielded an unusually strong slate of candidates. Though only one of their new candidates won election, that of Sam Park for a House seat, many of the others ran very strong, one losing by less than 300 votes.
U.S. Rep. Rob Woodall also won only a 54 percent victory over a relatively weak Democratic opponent. That showed that the Democratic candidates attracted quite a bloc of new voters in every race where they had candidates.
In this and other elections, if the Democratic Party can continue to field good candidates, it may be that in 2018, and probably for sure by 2020, the Democrats could become the dominant party in Gwinnett.
Who knows? Some of the old-time Democrats who switched to become Republicans to get elected, might even be thinking of switching back to the Democratic Party, worried about their electability as Republicans?
A few other observations about Gwinnett in this election:
- Amazingly, Hillary Clinton actually polled more votes in Gwinnett than Donald Trump. The final unofficial returns shows Ms. Clinton won 50.14 percent of the vote, or 165,063, compared to 146,463 for Trump. Gary Johnson and write-ins won 17,680 ballots.
- Yet in the secondary big race, Republican Johnny Isakson won 154,019 (49.69%) votes to re-take the Senate race here, while Jim Barksdale polled 140,201 votes in Gwinnett. Others had 17,749. The interesting aspect here is that a Republican won the Senate race, while a Democrat won the county presidential vote. Voters, apparently, are actually making choices in Gwinnett, not routinely voting straight party lines.
- Gwinnett’s SPLOST won easily again, with 62.66% of the vote. In 2013, it got 58% of the vote; in 2008, 56%; in 2004, 65%; and in 2000, 55%. The highest winning percentage for SPLOST was the first one, to build a new courthouse in 1985, which had an 88% victory.
Of all the talk we have heard, Gwinnettians (and probably the rest of the nation) are relieved that the 2016 election is behind us. It’s been so ever-consuming, and raucous, and one we will long remember!
WE INVITE GwinnettForum readers to send us one-paragraph reasons why you think the election(s) turned out the way they did!
- Have a comment? Send to: elliott@brack.net
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