AUSTELL, Ga. — One of Georgia’s 2024 congressional elections is taking shape as a judge approved new maps this week.
United States Rep. Lucy McBath announced she’ll shift to a newly drawn district across the metro from her current seat.
It would be hard to find a sharper ideological shift than the one voters in Austell are likely to see in the fall of 2024.
Austell is a Democratic-leaning area that helped elect U.S. Rep. David Scott two elections ago.
It got included into a newly-drawn 13th congressional district won by Republican firebrand Marjorie Taylor Greene in 2022.
A few weeks ago, the Republican-led legislature took this area out of Greene’s district and included it in a new court-ordered sixth congressional district. Democratic congresswoman McBath announced she will run for the newly drawn seat here, putting her in almost entirely new territory if she wins in November.
"Just like any candidate, they're going to have to come to the community and speak to the community. Whether it’s Lucy McBath, whether its Marjorie Taylor Greene, it doesn’t matter who it is," said Leroy Tre Hutchins, a Cobb school board member from the area.
It’s political motion sickness to Hutchins.
"Three changes in six years," he noted. "This type of stuff creates voter apathy where people feel like their voice doesn’t matter or their vote doesn’t count."
McBath, a gun control activist, announced she would pivot from her Gwinnett County-based district to this one west of Atlanta. Even if McBath doesn’t move into the new district, Hutchins expects voters to welcome her.
"Her story aligns with the community story. We’re all concerned about gun safety," he said.
Republican Jason Shepherd says it’s a given that the new district will be Democrat-friendly because lawmakers purposefully drew it that way. He doesn’t expect voters to worry much about whether McBath actually lives in the new district.
"We’ve had several members of Congress over the decades who have not lived in the district. And they’ve been reelected overwhelmingly," Shepherd said. "You're representing people. You're not representing numbers."