Chairman Mike Berlon Statement on HD 113

Georgia – Democratic Party of Georgia Chairman Mike Berlon issues the following statement regarding yesterday’s election in Georgia House District 113:

“We are very proud of Dan Matthews of Oconee. He ran a strong race against long odds, and we appreciate his willingness to strive for a better community.

“We are also proud of the new generation of political strategists and community activists that assisted with Dan’s campaign. We are building a new generation of rising stars, and we expect that their hard work will result in many future successes.

“During my campaign for Chair, I described the ‘5% solution’. This is my plan to increase democratic performance in individual races throughout the state by 5% or more during the next few years. We surpassed this goal in HD 113 with an increase of 10 points over the November results less than a year ago.

“We also saw a higher voter turnout in this runoff election than in the previous special election, which demonstrates our get-out-the-vote strategy is becoming more effective.

“Even more impressive, we raised our democratic performance by over 50% in Oconee and Oglethorpe and flipped a portion of Clarke that voted republican in 2010 to a 62% democratic district.

“Congratulations to Dan Matthews for his strong race. While we continue to crunch the numbers from yesterday’s elections, one thing is clear. Georgia is bluer today than it was in November of last year.”