In This Story
Schar School of Policy and Government dean Mark J. Rozell and Associate Professor Jeremy D. Mayer received the 2024 V.O. Key Award from the Southern Political Science Association in January. The award recognizes the best book on Southern politics published over the previous two years.
“African American Statewide Candidates in the New South is a brilliant study of the emergence and conditions for success of Black politicians at the statewide level in the South,” said Keith Gåddie, chair of the Selection Committee for the Key Award and the Hoffman Family Chair in the American Ideal and professor at Texas Christian University. “The rich case studies, use of sophisticated data, and insightful findings combine with lively writing to produce an excellent work.”
Rozell and Mayer co-wrote the book with Charles S. Bullock III and Susan A. MacManus; it was published by Oxford University Press in 2022.
Following up on their 2019 book The South and the Transformation of U.S. Politics, also with Oxford University Press, the more recent work examines the success, when compared to previous elections, of Black Democratic candidates for statewide office between 2017 and 2022 in a group of “growth” Southern states. The growth states are Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Caroline, Texas, and Virginia.
“The impetus for the book was a shared belief among the four authors that, despite the many failures of Southern Black candidates for statewide offices, there are hints beneath the surface that the South is changing dramatically,” Mayer said.
The authors attribute the increased success of several recent African American candidates largely to demographic changes and to an increased willingness of white voters to support Black candidates. This success, the authors argue, potentially bodes well for the future success of African American candidates in these states. The authors view more recent elections as rooted in ongoing changes and as part of an accelerating cycle.
Rozell, Mayer, and their co-authors capture in detail the demographic changes that have made the growth states of the South increasingly hospitable to African American candidates. As the authors point out, the region has become more diverse (with the growth coming largely within the Hispanic and Asian communities), younger, and less conservative. This change has boosted the Democratic Party. One of the biggest barriers to the success of Black candidates in the growth states since the 1970s had been their affiliation with the Democratic Party. In the five case studies from 2017–22 examined in this book, the candidates ran not only as Democrats but as progressive ones at that. The candidates—Justin Fairfax in Virginia, Stacey Abrams and Raphael Warnock in Georgia, Andrew Gillum in Florida, and Jaime Harrison in South Carolina—spoke openly about issues of race and racial equity and embraced a wide range of causes dear to liberal voters. Such an electoral approach was made possible by and was dependent upon the demographic changes in the decades leading up to the election cycles examined in the book. Part and parcel of the demographic change was an increased, more recent willingness of white voters to support Black candidates. Between 2003 and 2018, Black candidates for statewide office in the region underperformed comparable white Democrats by 3.5%. By the 2018–22 election cycle, this racial gap (in statewide elections for higher offices in the growth states) had dwindled in some of the case studies presented in this book and disappeared in others. A far more significant factor was whether the Black candidates were running against incumbents, or, in the case of Warnock, at least officeholders who themselves had only recently been appointed.
The authors believe that the success of Black Democratic candidates will continue and increase in the future, given underlying demographic changes. They write,
The future validity of this argument (namely, how it played out in the 2022–23 election cycle) is the topic of the authors’ most recent collaboration, The Changing Political South: How Minorities and Women are Transforming the Region (Oxford University Press), published in January 2024. In the most recent book, the authors argue that, with a major caveat, the trends depicted in African American Statewide Candidates in the New South continued to gain strength in the most recent election cycle but have yet to emerge fully. The caveat is that there is now greater uncertainty as to whether the ongoing demographic changes will benefit the Democratic Party.
“We cannot presume a bright future for Democratic politicians just because of demographic changes in the South,” Rozell said. “Although opportunities for Black politicians continue to improve, it is incumbent on the Democratic Party to hold together its coalition.”