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Two elections this week — one [ [link removed] ] in northeast Georgia, the other [ [link removed] ] in the heart of Miami — offered a glimpse of a region continuing to evolve. Eric Gisler’s narrow win to flip a Republican-held Georgia House district and Eileen Higgins’ decisive mayoral victory in Miami, the city’s first Democratic win in nearly three decades, are not isolated events. They reflect the larger political reshaping that has been moving across the South.
The purple cast of the southern maps has become a repeat occurrence, proof of concept and opportunity. Georgia’s most recent flip came about because we have continued to organize people around the issues they are actually facing every day. Gisler ran on affordability, health care access, and the mismatch between wages and cost-of-living that is crushing families. Like his colleagues who recently won seats on the price-setting public utility board, he won where Republicans have held power for years. He won because volunteers knocked doors and convinced voters one conversation at a time. And he built on years of slow, steady but inexorable effort to show what is possible here. Yes, messaging is important, but the work of organizing in our communities remains even more crucial — married to the patience to weather setbacks and build on victories.
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Down in Florida, Miami is another reminder that the political pendulum swings towards change. Higgins ran as a problem-solver, one willing to prove that good solid leadership could deliver for her community. She championed the protection of residents and their families, decrying the inhumanity of recent immigration policies and directly connecting the economics of the city to the diversity of their population. Rather than hide from tough conversations, she focused on shared values and a vision for better lives for all people. In a city where Trump still holds cultural weight, she won 60–40 — a landslide that would have once seemed unthinkable. A Democrat now leads the largest city in a county Trump carried by double digits just a year earlier, and in a state that pundits have written off as a bastion of MAGA.
Taken together, these races remind us about something important: the South matters. It is competitive, fluid, and far more responsive to the ideals of the American Dream than anywhere else in the country. Voters who have felt priced out, ignored, marginalized or talked down to are insisting on better and are ready for change. Our job as Democrats is to invest in these communities, show up regularly — not just when there’s an election — and deliver for working families.
This is the story of a region steadily turning blue because of decades of work and a stubborn belief that we are entitled to more. The South understands the tensions between identity and economy, between history and future possibilities. When we refuse to choose one over the other, when we respect and learn our lessons, we can carve out victories in unexpected places. Gains are coming precinct by precinct, election by election, through field work and credibility, not slogans and timidity. If Democrats keep showing up and showing we can deliver, then the electoral map will keep shifting towards more — and the people will win.
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