Veteran Congressman Faces Stiff Challenge in Close Georgia Race

The dean of Georgia’s Congressional delegation now faces the most formidable electoral challenge of his 30-year House tenure in a race said to be the closest in the Deep South.

Redistricting has put into play Georgia’s 2nd Congressional District, which Sanford Bishop has represented since 1992. The southwest Georgia district, extending from Columbus south to the Florida line and east to Macon, is one of farms and small towns, plus big military bases like Fort Benning and Warner Robins Air Force Base. It’s home to Plains, the birthplace of former President Jimmy Carter.

Bishop, a moderate Democrat, took the seat when it was first drawn as a majority-black district to comply with a Justice Department order. It hasn’t always been majority black since then, said Charles Bullock, a University of Georgia political science professor. The original redistricting was overturned by a federal decision against racial gerrymandering a few years later.

But Bishop got reelected despite the black population dropping to 39 percent, Bullock told The Epoch Times. He said most black representatives elected in the South under the original districting, Bishop included, held their seats even after their districts’ respective black populations went down.

And he kept getting reelected. The district has sent him to Congress 15 times. It more recently had grown to 51 percent black. This last round of redistricting dropped that to 49 percent and made the district’s estimated party split much closer. Real Clear Politics rates it a tossup.

That’s made an opening for Republican Chris West of Thomasville, a lawyer for a real estate developer, who defeated the much better financed primary campaign of Jeremy Hunt.

Hunt, a black Republican and retired military officer who had gone to West Point and served as an Army intelligence officer, has the military resume that area voters like to see.

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