On Nov. 7, one of the nation’s key state legislative contests will take place in Georgia. A special election in the state’s 6th Senate District provides Democrats with the opportunity to break the GOP’s veto-proof supermajority in that chamber, and Jen Jordan is the best candidate in this race to flip this seat. Daily Kos is proud to endorse her.
This seat became vacant when its GOP occupant, Hunter Hill, recently resigned to run for governor. Hill’s Metro Atlanta-area district gave him just a 52-48 victory last fall, and at the same time, it went for Hillary Clinton by a 55-40 margin, making it the bluest GOP-held seat in the state. What’s more, the GOP field in the special election is badly fractured, featuring no fewer than five candidates. (All candidates will run together on a single ballot next month, with the top two vote-getters, regardless of party, advancing to a Dec. 5 runoff in the likely event no one takes a majority in the first round.)
Democrats therefore have a real chance to flip this seat, but the race recently took a stunning turn when it came out that the the guy who’d held Hill to that tight 4-point margin in 2016 had repeatedly expressed shockingly homophobic and misogynistic views on social media. The silver lining, though, is that this candidate was just one of three Democrats in the race, and a true progressive fighter—Jen Jordan—can lead us to victory.
Jordan is a first-time candidate, but she’s no stranger to fighting for progressive causes. As an attorney, she’s stood up in court for victims of sexual assault and predatory lenders, and she’s fought on the front lines in the state’s voting rights battle. In 2006, when Georgia enacted one of the first and most restrictive voter ID laws in the nation, Jordan sued the state and prevented the law from taking effect in that year’s elections. Jordan is also a staunch advocate for public education, LGBTQ rights, raising the minimum wage, and expanding access to heath care, and local Democrats and progressive organizations have rallied around her candidacy.
This race is about far more than one seat, though. Next year, Democrats will try to win Georgia’s governorship for the first time in two decades, but if we’re successful at the top of the ticket, the last thing we’d want is to leave the GOP with a legislative supermajority that they could use to pass conservative bills and override Democratic vetoes at will—something that happens almost weekly in neighboring North Carolina, where this exact situation exists. Helping Jordan now will therefore help the entire state if we can win in 2018.
So please help elect this progressive fighter and break the GOP’s stranglehold on Georgia—give $3 to Jen Jordan today!