Data analyst and blogger Charles Hayslett divides the state of Georgia into two parts that he calls Atlanna and Notlanna, and he says the two parts differ in terms of population, population health, economics, educational attainment, and politics.
The gap between the two parts of the state is large, Hayslett said, with Atlanna generally doing well and Notlanna not.
One way to address the problems in Notlanna is through creation of a state agency to help stressed counties more easily access state services now provided by a list of different departments and agencies, Hayslett said.
Another way is through some form of consolidation of government agencies, he said.
Actual reduction of the number of counties–Hayslett said the state needs about 59 counties, not the 159 it has–is a “third rail” of Georgia politics that leaders are afraid to even talk about, he said.
Hayslett made these comments as the invited speaker at last week’s meeting of the Oconee County Democratic Party, where he reviewed research he has published on his web site, Trouble In God’s Country.
Oconee County, which is part of Notlanna, doesn’t fit nicely into the scheme, as it more closely matches characteristics of Atlanna, Hayslett acknowledged.
Oconee County ranks second in the state in terms of educational attainment, behind Forsyth County and ahead of Fulton County, both parts of Atlanna, Hayslett said.
Data Sources
Hayslett, a former journalist and public relations practitioner, draws on a variety of data sources for his Trouble in God’s Country blog, which is subtitled “Connecting the dots in rural Georgia,” and used those sources for his presentation to the Oconee Democrats.
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| Introductory Slide, Hayslett Picture Inserted 9/19/2024 |
Included were Census Bureau data, Georgia Department of Public Health Data, and reports from the Georgia Secretary of State.
A June 2, 2024, blog posting on Georgia county rankings based on national per capita income data for 2022 from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis and the Census Bureau, lists Oconee County with $79,902 in per capita income
That figure ranks number two in the state and number 165 in the nation.
Hayslett, speaking by Zoom, told the 30 people who had assembled at the meeting room at the Oconee County Library in Watkinsville on Sept. 19 that his focus was going to be on comparisons of the 12 counties that he calls Atlanna versus the remaining 147 counties that make up Notlanna.
The 12 Atlanna counties are: Cherokee, Clayton, Cobb, DeKalb, Douglas, Fayette, Forsyth, Fulton, Gwinnett, Henry, Paulding, and Rockdale.
Hayslett compared the two parts of the state in terms of population, economics, population health, educational attainment, and politics before turning to what he called the strategic challenges facing the state because of the discrepancies.
Initial Comparisons
The number of counties in the state with more deaths than births increased dramatically in recent years, Hayslett said. The increase peaked during the COVID years, he said, but continued an upward trend.
Hayslett told the group that “Between 1980 and 2000, Georgia made really remarkable progress in improving its per capita income. It rose from 84.5 percent (of the U.S. average) in 1980 to 94.1 percent in 2000 after peaking at 99.1 percent in 1999.”
These changes allowed Georgia to improve its rank among states from 38 to 25, Hayslett said.
“Since then, we have surrendered all of those gains,” he said. “Between 2000 and 2020, Georgia dropped 14 places to 39th, and the only state that did worse was Delaware that fell 16 places.”
“I know I’m speaking to a group of Democrats who probably look at that joint gap between 1980 and 2000. Those were Democratic years,” Hayslett said. “Then the Republicans took over, and look what happened.”
“I don’t think you’d be all wrong,” he said, “but if I were to overlay the performance of some adjoining states, North Carolina, Florida, in particular, you would see similar slumps.”
“It’s not exactly parallel,” he said, “but if you look at it, you’d have to think something was happening regionally that influenced that performance. But Georgia was far and away the most extreme downturn.”
“I don’t think (Republican) Sonny Perdue took over (as governor) and threw a switch and sent per capita performance into a nose dive,” he said. “But frankly I do wonder if they even noticed.”
Additional Comparisons
“Atlanna is still sending a lot more freshman to college each fall than the rest of the state is,” Hayslett said.
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| Massassippi Slide 9/19/2024 |
The differences in terms of the number of students attending the state’s research universities also is striking, he said.
“The overwhelming freshmen enrollments at (Georgia) Tech in 2020 came from the 12 metro Atlanta counties,” Hayslett said.
“There were 83 counties that year that did send a single kid to Georgia Tech in the fall of 2020.”
“And 22 or 23 did not send anybody to UGA (University of Georgia),” he added.
While Forsyth ranks 38 nationally in educational attainment, Hayslett said, followed by Oconee, ranked 46, and Fulton, ranked 59, Wheeler County ranked 3,122, Atkinson County ranked 3,125, and Telfair County ranked 3,129, he said.
“Every once in a while some south Georgia politician will get some wild hair and say we ought to split off and be our own state,” Hayslett said.
“If we did that, we could forget about talking about the two Georgias and just call ourselves Massassippi,” he said.
In terms of educational attainment, Hayslett said, Atlanna is below Colorado and above Massachusetts, while Notlanna is below Mississippi and above West Virginia.
In terms of premature death rates, between 1994 and 2022, Atlanna got better and Notallana got worse, Hayslett said.
Politics
In 1990, when Democrat Zell Miller ran against Republican Johnny Isakson for Governor, Hayslet said, only seven counties gave more than 70 percent of there vote for Miller, and none gave that large of a margin for Isakson.
That year, when Miller won with 54 percent of the vote, 37 counties were decided by less than 10 percent, he said.
In 2022, when Republican Brian Kemp won with 54 percent of the vote for governor against Democrat Stacey Abrams, 86 counties gave him more than 70 percent of the vote. Three counties gave Abrams more than 70 percent of their vote.
Only 10 counties were decided by less than 10 percentage points, Hayslett said.
“This tells you not only a lot about how the state has changed,” he said, “but the fact that, in 1990 the entire state was competitive. There was almost nowhere that a candidate could afford to ignore.”
At present, “Democrats almost need a passport to go south of Macon,” he said.
“The political divide, and along with the cultural divide, and religious divide, are huge problems when it comes to dealing” with the rural/urban divide in the state, he said.
Strategic Challenges
The “economic deterioration and depopulation of rural Georgia,” is a major problem for the state, Hayslett said.
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| Closing Slide 9/19/2024 |
This includes what he called a “decline of regional hub cities and smaller cities” in the state.
“Albany, I think, is gone,” he said. “I don’t know how you bring it back, and I don’t know how you bring back southwest Georgia.”
“Macon also has a lot of stress,” he said, “although they’ve done a lot of interesting things down there that helped.”
The “political and cultural divisons between Atlanna and Notlanna,” and the “economic, education, and population health aftershocks from COVID” are challenges for the state, he said.
“One of the things you are supposed to do with speeches is find some way to close out on a positive note,” Hayslett said. “Be sort of uplifting. But I’ve got to tell you, I’ve got nothing.”
“I don’t have a lot of good news or a lot of optimism about how we deal with this problem,” he said.
Responses To Questions
In response to questions, Hayslett said “he has floated this idea for several years.”
“I’m fully prepared for people to laugh out loud at this,” he said, “but create an organization modeled on FEMA to deal with what really are emergency conditions in huge parts of rural Georgia.” FEMA is the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
This agency would be a single point of contact for all emergencies.
“My thinking is, at the state level, those counties need something comparable to that,” he said. “Right now, they are dealing with silo state agencies. Economic Development, Education, Department of Community Affairs.”
“They need some sort of interface that will develop the understanding and the knowledge base to help them over time,” he said.
“And there is an...idea floating around that is kind of a second cousin to what I suggested,” he said.
“There was a proposal at the last session of the legislature to allow counties, at least three contiguous counties that have suffered population loss and economic decline...for three years in a row to begin to combine certain service operations and to hire an administrator to manage those things on a multi county basis,” according to Hayslett.
“We’ve got 159 counties, and we’ve got about 100 too many,” he added. “But there really is no serious discussion of consolidating counties, and it’s a third rail of Georgia politics.”
Election Board Report
The Zoom connection for Hayslett didn’t work initially, and Ken Davis, the Democratic Party representative on the Oconee County Board of Elections and Registration, updated the group both before and after Hayslett spoke on issues before the Board.
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| Davis 9/19/2024 |
Davis told the group that three newly appointed members of the state Election Board are “election deniers and MAGAs and they are trying to make our life miserable.”
“My own personal thought is what they are doing is they’re making rules and putting things in place right before the election so if our staff gets confused and they slip up, then when Trump loses, they are going to come back and say, see these guys are all crooked.”
“So far we have been able to keep up with what they are going to be able to do,” he said.
He said the local Board “has been hit” with challenges of registered voters, “and we’re being sued about that right now.”
“I can promise you as a member of the Board that we are doing our best,” he said. “We are trying to adhere to the law. We’re getting advice. We’re making sure everything is documented.”
“We’re on it,” he said. “We’ll do the best we can. I think we’ll come through it fine.”
Eric Gisler, Democratic Party nominee in the race for House District 121, followed Davis with a report on his experience as a delegate at the Democratic Party Convention in August in Chicago.
Gisler is running against incumbent Republican Marcus Wiedower.
Video
The video below is of the complete meeting of the Oconee County Democrats on Sept. 19.
Davis began his report at 9:03 in the video.
Hayslett began speaking at 21:33.
The audio is quite poor initially and never good throughout the presentation.
Davis resumed his report at 1:08:24.
Gisler gave his report starting at 1:18:38.
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