GA-07: Rep. Rob Woodall will not seek reelection

[Del Tachi]

GOP should be able to hold this seat.  Woodall was an awful campaigner who didn't take his reelection seriously, so I think his retirement is just another indicator that he's a politician who doesn't like having to campaign.  A GOP nominee with more fire-in-his-belly will do just fine here.

Did Abrams even win GA-07 in 2018?

[Del Tachi]

this is GOOD for GOP chances. It is laughable to imply otherwise. The GOP are the people who were pressuring him to retire.

Unless the incumbent is unpopular(*cough* Tenney *cough*), its always better to have an incumbent than run in an open race, especially in a rather even seat.

Woodall wasnt unpopular.

Not when that incumbent isn't keen on fundraising or actually running a campaign.  The NRCC spent $0 in GA-07 while spending close to $1 million on Handel.  That wasn't because GA-07 was noncompetitive, but because Woodall had only $529k in his war chest in August and the NRCC has a history of not bailing-out candidates unwilling to do their own fundraising.

A better Republican candidate will be an improvement over Woodall's 2018 fundraising/campaign operation.

[Del Tachi]

From the NYT in October 2018:

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A big, competitive GOP primary in 2020 will ensure that the Republican nominee will have the fundraising and campaign chops to keep the seat.  Woodall's retiring simply because he doesn't like to campaign, folks.

[Del Tachi]

I'd like to think I'm usually a fairly realistic person when it comes to the performance of the GOP in the South, and what chances both they and Democrats have in various places.

With that being said, I see no viable, realistic path for the GOP to hold onto this seat. Gwinnett is one of those places where even somebody like me can turn their head for a few months and already be out of touch with how much demographic shift and growth has occurred in a broader area. It's changing faster than SoCal. It's changing faster than NoVA. I'm not sure there's even a place anywhere in the country that is comparable to it in this regard (maybe another area within the broader metro).

Democrats won't need it to be a good year for them to win. Hell, the GOP could probably win the House PV and this district would still have a decent chance of flipping. Besides the huge rate of demographic turnover and growth, this is also ground zero in GA for Latino and Asian voters (who, while turning out in big numbers in 2018 like everybody else, still lagged the electorate as a whole - their turnout will be higher in 2020, with or without Abrams).

Just because I consider you a fairly neutral and informed observer of Georgia politics, I'll ask: how would you rate Woodall's 2018 campaign operation?  A lot of GA Republicans didn't think he put forth much effort and I think that's a major reason why Woodall is retiring.


As for GA-07, yes it's an increasingly diverse district but let's not conflate Gwinnett County trends with GA-07 trends.  The most Democratic parts of Gwinnett  aren't even in GA-07, and Buford and Sugar Hill are still rabid pro-Trump exurbia that will be turning out for him big time in 2020.