Jim Martin: Being a “Red State” Democrat

Jim Martin has been involved in Georgia politics since 1983, when he was elected to the state’s House of Representatives. As a member of the Georgia House, he served as chairman of multiple committees, such as the Judiciary Committee and the Human Services Subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee. In 2008, he ran as a candidate for U.S. Senate in Georgia against incumbent Saxby Chambliss and made it to a run-off election, ultimately losing to his Republican opponent. Prior to his career in politics, Mr. Martin served in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War. On June 20th, Rep. Martin sat down with Merion West’s Erich Prince to discuss the possibility of changing demographics in red states, the history of partisanship in Georgia, and what working across the aisle really looks like.

There was a lot of discussion around the time of the election of 2016 about certain states, such as Georgia and Texas, potentially being in play for the Democrats at the presidential level. How true were those claims? Or, even if they weren’t true then, is this something that is conceivable in the near future?

That’s a really good question. That’s the reason to have elections I guess. You never really know until you put two candidates up and you count the votes. I do think that Georgia is a conservative state and has a tradition of being a conservative state, but the definition of conservatism is changing dramatically. I’m not sure that Georgia is as conservative as that term currently means in the United States. There’s been a progressive element in Georgia politics for a long time. I guess that’s a long way to say that I do think that Georgia is changing; some of the policies that are now called “conservative” probably are more conservative than the majority of Georgia voters would have it.