A new column from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Patricia Murphy this morning outlines DPG Chair Charlie Bailey’s plan to flip seats up and down the ballot in Georgia by holding Republicans accountable for 23 years of failed rule and building the strongest coordinated organizing operation our state has ever seen. As Georgia Republican candidates remain mired in scandal and division, Georgia Democrats are building an unprecedented campaign that can win up and down the ballot.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Meet Charlie Bailey, Jon Ossoff’s pick to flip control of Georgia in 2026
Patricia Murphy, August 28th, 2026
Key excerpts:
- With Ossoff’s crucial reelection on the horizon, Democrats voted to pay for a full-time, dedicated party chair.
- Like Bailey, Ossoff’s top focus was grassroots organizing, the kind of door-to-door canvassing that’s expensive but can move the needle in close elections. Bailey also told Ossoff and others that he wanted to re-create the party’s long-gone research operation, double down on recruiting, get involved in targeted races and supercharge fundraising to make it all possible.
- Now, 18 months into the job, Bailey has so far exceeded most Democrats’ expectations. The opposition research group he wanted is up and running. The coordinated campaign now has more than 100 staffers with 30 staffed field offices. The door-to-door canvassing that Ossoff wanted has been underway since May.
- It’s added up to crucial wins. Last year, Democrats scored 26-point victories in two Public Service Commission races, while State Rep. Eric Gisler, a Democrat, flipped a Republican House seat in the Athens area. Bailey said the party used them all as test runs for 2026.
- “When you can get a message that hits the reality of what someone’s going through, and you’ve got a specific action that someone took to bring it about, that’s point A to point B,” he said of Republicans. “Now, C is ‘Fire their..” Well, you get the picture.
- That is typical for Bailey, a sharp-talking former prosecutor from rural Harris County. After losing two statewide campaigns, first for attorney general in 2018 and then lieutenant governor in 2022, he had returned to practice law for what he thought would be the long haul until the party chair job came open.
- With President Donald Trump back in the White House, Bailey saw Georgia Democrats’ best chance in years to return to power. He jumped back into the fray.
- “I think the single biggest factor in 2026 is a slate of Republican candidates that have fully stood by Donald Trump as he has done some of the most unpopular things any president has ever done,” Bailey said. “He said he’s going to help families. He didn’t say that he was going to start with the first family.”
- Jay Walker, a senior adviser to [GOP gubernatorial nominee Rick] Jackson, told me earlier this summer that the Jackson campaign is modeled on the famous Kemp turnout operation that delivered a seven-point victory to the governor four years ago. Voters will get personalized, “concierge service,” he said, “And we don’t stop until Election Day.”
- Bailey dismissed “concierge service” as pure spin.
- “That sounds like a slick term someone came up with to paper over the fact that they ain’t really doing much work,” Bailey said. “You can’t replicate presence in a community with a slick, fancy text message that an algorithm told you to spit out.”
- […] Bailey thinks that Ossoff and the rest of the Democratic ticket will be far preferable for voters than the struggling-to-keep-up status quo that millions of Georgians are facing today.
- “At some point, people just get fed up, and enough is enough and we’re not going to take this anymore,” he said. “And that’s what we’ve been telling folks. You ain’t got to take it anymore, and you can choose something else.”
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