Sen. Johnny Isakson of Georgia has represented the state in the U.S. Senate for nearly fourteen years, and recently won reelection in 2016 against a little known Atlanta investment banker named Jim Barksdale. Not a single prominent Democrat in Georgia volunteered to run against Sen. Isakson then. Their bench has widened significantly coming into 2020, with a few caveats. Stacey Abrams has once again declined to run for Senate, focusing her energy on her anti-voter suppression project coming into the General Elections. This means that no nationwide celebrity is coming to save the 2020 Georgia Senate race, which might actually be a good thing. Unknown candidates have a high ceiling of support relative to those with high name recognition. But they also come with higher volatility. In this post, I want to cover Democrats' chances of flipping one of the two Senate seats up for grabs in Georgia in 2020, discuss their most likely candidates, and the Republican factor of who gets nominated as Isakson's replacement in the meantime.

The governors of most states have the authority to fill vacant Senate seats with someone from their own party. This reality makes it all the more unfortunate that Stacey Abrams was unable to win the Governor's Mansion in 2018. Given the rules of Georgia's constitution, she would have been able to nominate anyone she pleased to the Senate, where they would have enjoyed the advantage of incumbency going into the 2020 Special Election. That is mostly conjecture - Isakson likely wouldn't have been as willing to retire if he knew that a Democrat would replace him. Now, Republicans get to benefit from Gov. Kemp's appointment. Two factors go into a Governor's decision in appointing a replacement Senator. The first is their own prospects for reelection. A Governor's appointment choice is heavily subject to scrutiny from the party. Arizona Governor Doug Ducey reportedly wanted to nominate John McCain's widow Cindy McCain to his Senate seat after he passed away in mid-2018, but feared the backlash from far-right members of his party. He refused to nominate someone more controversial, instead choosing to nominate former Senator John Kyl who had no interest in being reelected in 2020. After Kyl's surprise retirement in December, Ducey had the easy choice of appointing the losing 2018 Republican candidate for Senate, Martha McSally, to the seat. Gov. Kemp faces a similar situation: does he nominate an elder statesman who won't offend anybody and won't run for reelection in 2020, or does he nominate a firebrand who will go on to run again? The first option is safe, but removes the advantage that incumbency brings a Senate candidate. The second option is riskier, but enables whoever the appointee to go on and be a favorite for 2020. This option certainly worked out for Sen. Tina Smith of Minnesota, who was appointed to fill the Senate seat of resigning Senator Al Franken, and won her subsequent 2018 reelection.

I believe Gov. Kemp will choose the latter option. He is a firm Trump-ally and popular among Georgia Republicans, and is not in any kind of difficult or opportunistic electoral position come 2022. He has little reason to go with a safe option. Instead, he will want to have a hand in who might be Georgia's Senator for the next ten years (if they win reelection in both 2020 & 2022). There are several past trends to look at when guessing who Kemp might nominate. There have been 11 Senate appointments in the past decade that weren't a 'safe pick': Arizona Senator Martha McSally (lost a concurrent Senate race), Mississippi Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith (member of Governor's cabinet), Minnesota Senator Tina Smith (member of a governor's cabinet), Alabaman Senator Luther Strange (member of a governor's cabinet), South Carolinian Senator Tim Scott (Member of SC's U.S. House Delegation), Hawaiian Senator Brian Schatz (member of a governor's cabinet), Montanan Senator John Walsh (member of a Governor's cabinet), Illinois Senator Roland Burris (member of a governor's cabinet), New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (Member of NY's U.S. House Delegation), Nevada Senator Dean Heller (Member of NV's U.S. House Delegation) and Colorado Senator Michael Bennett (unrelated). Six of these eleven were members of a governor's cabinet, which brings Kemp's own into the spotlight, and they were all under 60 when appointed.

What does that mean for Georgia? It rules out Agricultural Commissioner Gary Black and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, and leaves his Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan and his Attorney General Chris Carr. Carr's not particularly close with the Governor but had strong ties to Isakson, for whom he served as Chief of Staff. Duncan, despite being close with Kemp, is much like Stacey Abrams and has previously ruled out stints in Washington to the media. If I had to guess, Kemp will nominate Carr. However, Kemp has a habit of going against tradition, and I wonder if he'll buck the trend and nominate Nick Ayers - a Georgia native and former aide to both Vice President Mike Pence and fmr. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley. Ayers refused an offer to become Trump's Chief of Staff earlier this year to pursue political office in his home state. Such a move would immediately launch him into consideration of being the 2024 Republican Vice Presidential nominee should he win in 2020 and 2022. Between Carr and Ayers, there are some promising possibilities for Kemp as he continues to govern Georgia.

Onto the Democrats. Their chances of winning both seats in Georgia are slim. When two seats are up in a single state during an election, they tend to go the same way. What does that mean in 2020? Not all that much actually. Georgia's a swing state now, and with Trump's approval rating barely above water at +2%, Georgian Democrats need to copy some strategies from other candidates to win one or both of the seats (and hope the Democratic nominee for President's really good). Because the other seat has an entrenched incumbent in Sen. David Perdue, I would suggest that the Democrats concentrate most of their resources on this race. A Senator's name recognition isn't going to go up all that much in a year. They'll have an incumbency advantage, but it'll be smaller. Voter elasticity - the number of swing voters in a state - is declining across the country and Georgia's no exception. That means they need a candidate who can drive up turnout to win Isakson's vacant seat. They don't need a moderate, they'll have those running against Sen. Perdue. Instead, what they need is a Stacey Abrams-like candidate who can drum up voter enthusiasm and benefit the most from Abrams' drive to combat voter suppression. The best candidate I can think for the Democrats to run in 2020 is Rep. Lucy McBath. The worst candidate I can think of for Democrats to run is Jon Ossoff. Ironically both come from the same congressional district.

I've mentioned in past posts that I really dislike Democratic tendencies to allow opportunistic electoral House losers to compete in Senate races. If they did not win in the small pond, they will not succeed in the big one. This is why I dislike both MJ Hegar and Amy McGrath's candidacies in Texas and Kentucky respectively. They both failed to win in their CDs and I'm sure that Schumer just picked the pair of them because they managed to raise money and will distract McConnell and Cornyn as a result. He doesn't expect either of them to win. That's why I worry that he'll choose Ossoff over McBath. Neither has expressed interest in running yet - but they're the two second-most famous Democrats in Georgia after Abrams. McBath managed to flip the same congressional district in 2018 that Ossoff failed to two years earlier. I would much rather see her compete for the Senate seat than him.