LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga. — Reps. Lucy McBath and Carolyn Bourdeaux flipped two longtime Republican congressional districts in Atlanta’s northern suburbs by running against then-President Donald Trump and his divisive brand of politics.
But as they fight to keep their House seats this year, they’re competing against each other.
After new congressional maps approved by the Republican-controlled state Legislature made McBath’s district more conservative, she decided to compete for Bourdeaux’s seat. That’s pitting two colleagues from the same party against one another ahead of Georgia’s May 24 primary.
Bourdeaux, who has referred to McBath as a “sister” and previously campaigned alongside her, said in a recent interview that she was “pretty shocked” by the primary challenge.
“If the shoe were on the other foot, it would not have crossed my mind in a million years to go over to the sixth (district) and run against her,” Bourdeaux said, lamenting that McBath was devoting resources to defeating her in the primary that could instead be directed at Republicans.
McBath said her push to remain in Congress is “about my work to honor my son,” not her primary opponent. Her 17-year old son, Jordan Davis, was shot and killed at a Florida gas station in 2012 by a white man who was angry over the loud music the Black teenager and his friends had been playing in their car, spurring McBath into becoming a gun safety activist.
“To keep that promise to my son and my family and my community, I have just refused to let Brian Kemp and the NRA gun lobby and the Republican Party decide who represents our communities in Georgia,” McBath said in an interview, referring to the state’s Republican governor and new maps state lawmakers drew based on the 2020 census.
She added: “I’ve had many people say to me, ’I think you’re making the right decision. It’s a difficult decision, of course, but I think it’s the right decision.’”
For some of these contenders, trying to unseat a colleague is just a political reality that comes along with the once-a-decade redistricting process. In Michigan, Levin and Stevens each said they still considered the other a friend despite now competing for a new seat drawn by an independent commission.
“When something unfortunate like this happens, to me, it’s nothing personal,” said Levin, who opted to forgo competing in a newly drawn battleground district to instead challenge Stevens in a safely Democratic one.
Stevens said that, during a recent vote on the House floor, she pulled Levin aside to discuss a bill they’d been working on. Later, she said, it hit her that, ”‘Holy smokes. I’m in this primary with him and, no matter what happens, we’re not gonna be colleagues.’”
The race in Georgia is especially stinging because it will stunt one of two nascent, promising political careers.
McBath won a House seat in 2018 from a suburban district that was held by former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich for two decades. The former Delta flight attendant is known nationally as a fierce gun safety advocate.
The same year, Bourdeaux came within a few hundred votes of unseating a Republican in the adjacent district, before ultimately winning the seat in 2020. A former public policy professor and Georgia Senate budget director, Bourdeaux has worked on transportation and infrastructure issues. She was among a small group of House Democrats who urged passage last year of a bipartisan infrastructure law before agreement was reached on a larger Democratic social policy package.
