Red State Rising: Triumph of the Republican Party in Georgia

On November 5, 2002—Election Day—most Georgians were surprised to learn that they had elected their first Republican governor in 130 years, becoming the last state of the old Confederacy to break the long-time Democratic lock on the governor’s office and both houses of the state legislature. Former state senator and businessman Sonny Perdue, from the Middle Georgia town of Bonaire, defeated the well-financed incumbent governor, Roy Barnes. In the same election, Democrat Tom Murphy, the longest-serving Speaker of any state House of Representatives in the country, was defeated in his reelection bid after forty-two years in the House, the last twenty-nine of them as Speaker.
By the end of the week, four state senators switched from Democrat to Republican, giving the Grand Old Party control of a single legislative chamber for the first time since the era of post-Civil War Reconstruction. Within two more years, Georgia elected a majority of Republicans to the state House of Representatives, and they, in turn, elected the first Republican Speaker since Reconstruction. Red State Rising: Triumph of the Republican Party in Georgia tells this fascinating story.