2018 General Election Lost 50 – 50 (419 votes)
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It is a six hour, 400 mile drive from Roanoke, Virginia to Suwanee, Georgia. From Roanoke where Carolyn Bordeaux https://www.carolyn4congress.com/ was born and grew up to Suwanee where she lives now. Take Route 77 south to Charlotte, NC, then Route 85 southwest to Suwanee. Stop just before reaching Atlanta. Make the trip a little longer and little more scenic by taking Route 81 to Route 85. Go past Asheville, NC and through the Nantahala National Forest. Roanoke is a struggling small city with fewer than 100,000 people. It is the hub of southwestern Virginia. Around the year of Carolyn Bordeaux‘s high school graduation, Roanoke exceeded the 100,000 mark. But not for long.
Suwanee’s population approaches 20,000 people, ten times what it was in 1990, double what it was in 2000. A thriving, diverse, upper middle class community, the median family income is over $90,000. From 2000 to 2010, African Americans, as a percent of the total population, increased by 50%. The Asian population tripled to almost 20% of the population. Suwanee is a diverse Atlanta suburb.
Though Republicans have represented Georgia’s seventh for more than twenty years, Nate Silver’s 538 says Bordeaux has an almost 30% chance of winning this seat. The seventh Congressional District is even more diverse than Suwanee. Asians are about 15 percent of the population. African Americans are slightly more than 20%. Hispanics slightly less. Whites are a plurality, not a majority.
Carolyn Bordeaux‘s route to Suwanee and to a Congressional candidacy was not as direct as taking Route 77 to Route 85. Her parents were school teachers. After Bordeaux was grown, her father tried business. According to Bordeaux, the business failed because of the 1990s business climate. Carolyn Bordeaux completed her circuitous route with a measure of restlessness and without a big bank account.
Carolyn Bordeaux went to Yale. From New Haven, she went to Washington to work as an aide for Senator Wyden. After five years, she was off to Los Angeles for an MPA at the University of Southern California. From there to upstate New York for a PhD in Public Administration at Syracuse University. And from there to what became her home as an academic — the Andrew Young School of Public Policy at Georgia State University (GSU). GSU is Georgia’s urban public university housed primarily in Atlanta. Carolyn Bordeaux came to GSU in 2003 with her doctorate in hand and hasn’t left since. Not that she wasn’t still a little restless.She took a leave of absence. She wanted practical work and became Director of the Georgia Senate Budget and Evaluation Office – a non-partisan job in a body with a Republican majority. Running for Congress, that job made her a target in the primary. She had worked for and with Republicans.
She returned to simply being an academic for a few years. She and her husband became parents. Her work continued at the intersection of politics and academia. Carolyn Bordeaux became the Director of the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State — a kind of university think tank.
Carolyn Bordeaux stepped down from being Director and started a run for Congress. She does not describe an electric shock because Donald Trump was elected or because the Women’s March moved her. She describes her commitment to “a life in service.”
Of the honors Carolyn Bordeaux has received, none are more important to her than the one voted by the Georgia Senate for helping them navigate the 2007/8 Great Recession. The honor was voted by the entire Senate — a Senate with a lot more Republicans than Democrats.
Carolyn Bordeaux says the times offer unique and serious problems. She writes “our President is tearing at the fabric of democracy.” He needs a “serious check” which she intends to provide.
Her opponent, the incumbent Rob Woodall, provides no such check. He was elected as part of the Red Wave of 2010. Now he is chair of the Republican Study Committee — about 150 conservative Republicans whose focus is reducing non-military spending and balancing the budget.
Woodall has been a supporter of “our President.” He voted for replacing the Affordable Care Act and for the substantial tax cuts. He has been deeply conservative on social issues — co-sponsoring a bill to recognize fetuses as living persons and fighting court decisions regarding same sex marriage by looking to state by state decisions.
Even when he seems less extreme, he is extreme. One of only six Republicans to refuse to sign Grover Norquist’s “Taxpayer Protection Pledge,” he opposed a single specific item because he wanted a broader tax revision. One of only six Republicans who opposed a bill to require states to honor concealed weapons permits of other states, he argued that a statute was unnecessary because the Second Amendment allowed concealed weapons throughout the country.
Where would Carolyn Bordeauxcheck President Trump? Health care is a start. She sees Congressional proposals, her opponents proposals to raise the cost of insurance for people with certain diseases as retrograde. She would sustain and fix the Affordable Care Act. She would encourage more states (including Georgia) to expand Medicaid under the law. She would allow Medicare to negotiate prices with drug companies.
Carolyn Bordeaux opposes the vilification of China’s economic policy. She explains that 38 patents owned by private companies are at the center of “our President’s” trade war with China. The President, she says, is working for private interests at the expense of our national interest.
Carolyn Bordeaux would fix the student debt problem by making college affordable. She would be a voice for women’s issues — equal pay, family leave, insurance that covers reproductive health and maternity care. She would be a voice for gun safety through universal background checks and restrictions on bump stocks and military style assault weapons. She would return to addressing climate change by ending the $20billion subsidy for the fossil fuel industry. She sees immigration for the benefits talented people bring to this country. She wants to fund the VA and help veterans transition to civilian life. She would allow transgender people to serve in the military and support diverse people to participate fully in American life.
Carolyn Bordeaux https://www.carolyn4congress.com/ is among the candidates who reject funding from corporate PACs. She is, in many respects, nearly an exact opposite to her incumbent opponent. One especially large difference with her incumbent opponent: When it comes to budgets, taxes, and finance, she is an expert– acclaimed by Georgia Republicans as well as Georgia Democrats. He is not.
There is one bit of finance we all know. Winning elections requires money. Help Bordeaux win her election.
