Up until 30 years ago, white male democrats dominated the Georgia General Assembly, and they seemingly were everywhere you turned around the Gold Dome.
That now feels like ancient history.
Out of the 236 current members of the Georgia General Assembly, a grand total of four are white male democrats. Two are from metro Atlanta, one is from Athens, and one is from Watkinsville, a bedroom community of Athens.
This is the mountain that Ross Sheppard is attempting to climb in the Georgia State House of Representatives District 149 election. Sheppard, who is white, is challenging incumbent Floyd Griffin in the May 19 democratic primary. Basically, Sheppard is looking to become the only white male democrat state legislator outside of the Atlanta Metropolitan Statistical Area or the Athens Metropolitan Statistical Area.
If Sheppard comes up short, it won’t be for a lack of trying. His campaign touts that its “already knocked on over 4,000 doors.” Sheppard hosted a “Cookout With The Candidate” on Sunday afternoon at Huley Park, deep in the heart of Floyd Griffin territory.
Griffin, meanwhile, is one of the most seasoned politicians in this part of Georgia. He was the first African-American mayor of Milledgeville. Prior to that, he became the first African-American elected to the State Senate from a majority white district since Reconstruction. In the years that followed, however, Griffin didn’t fare so well in campaigns.
He came up short in two subsequent runs for mayor, and he also came up short in a 2010 run for State Senate and a 2016 bid for State Representative. Griffin then finished fourth out of five democrats in the 2022 Secretary of State primary.
That set the stage for a political comeback in 2024, when Griffin defeated one-term incumbent and old political foe Ken Vance in the District 149 general election. That was the first year of the new-look District 149, which was a result of the civil rights gerrymandering lawsuit that’d been settled earlier in 2024, all in an effort to create more majority African-American General Assembly districts around Macon.
Griffin, 81, is one of roughly a half-dozen octogenarians currently serving in the General Assembly.
District 149 District 149 now includes everything in Baldwin County west of the Oconee River, a sliver of south Jones County, as well as a section of East Macon.
That particular stretch of Macon has roughly 10,000 registered voters, and African-Americans are the majority in the Macon portion.
Sheppard, meanwhile, grew up in Sandersville and attended Georgia College & State University. He later got into real estate and property development, purchasing the old Rockwell Mansion on Allen Memorial Drive in 2019.
At right, word-forword, are the answers to The Baldwin Bulletin’s candidate questionnaire sent out last week.