Ground Game: Georgia's 2026 ballot and what it means for the 2027 session

It's not just a new governor. It's not just a few new faces at the Capitol. It's new committee dynamics, new staff, and new members who arrive in January with no history with your organization and no reason to return your call yet.

Here is the cause and effect. Freshman legislators are elected by people in one district. They trust the mayor, the commission chair, the electric co-op manager, the chamber director, and the hospital CEO back home. When your issue reaches them, they will ask those people what they think. If your members are not known in that district, the answer is a shrug. If they are, the answer is a phone call to the member's cell.

That is why the weeks between November 4 and January 11 are the most useful weeks of the year for an association or a company. The new member is listening. The Biennial Institute in December tells freshmen how the process works. After that, the session moves fast and the window closes.

Three things to do before the ballot is counted:

1. List the five to ten districts where your members live, work, or employ people, and note which seats are open or contested.
2. Identify who in each of those communities your members already know. A plant manager who coaches Little League with the county commission chair is a relationship. A letterhead is not.
3. Decide who will carry your issue on January 11 and whether that person can reach a freshman in his or her home community, not just at the Capitol.

True North Strategies runs the Georgia ground game: grasstops relationships in all 159 counties and grassroots that ends in testimony, delivered by the principals. If you are not sure who is carrying your issue in January, my calendar is open: https://calendly.com/bernardreynolds/true-north-strategy-conversation

So, who carries your issue on January 11, and do they know your members in the freshman's district? How would it feel to find out in February that the answer was no? Politics is local, and it starts from the ground up.

Bernard Reynolds is the principal of True North Strategies, a Georgia public affairs firm.