The joke on American television last year was that the devil went down to Georgia but even he was shocked by some of the things he encountered in politics there.
All the ingredients of a Shakespearean play seem to be there: alleged skulduggery, fallings-out, revenge and feuds. And in the background looms the very large shadow of former president Donald Trump.
Georgia was a solidly red Republican state for years. However its political complexion has been changing with significant demographic shifts, combined with urban and suburban growth.
Over the last couple of decades, for example, the population of the Atlanta metropolitan region has grown significantly.
The rest of the state's growth has been concentrated in other smaller city areas, such as Savannah and Macon. At the same time, parts of rural Georgia have experienced population decline.
The growth in the suburbs, the demographic changes and a major voter -registration campaign, particularly involving the African-American community, tend to favour the Democrats. Both of the state’s US senators are now Democrats.
However, the transformation from a reliably red to a blue(ish) state has also been helped by some spectacular own goals by Republicans, and in particular by Trump’s allies if not by the former president himself.
The Democrat "get-out-the-vote" campaign has been spearheaded over recent years by a star of the Democratic Party, Stacey Abrams, a lawyer and a key political figure in Georgia. She narrowly lost the race for governor in 2018 by about 55,000 votes in an election that faced controversy over allegations of vote suppression by Republicans.
Now Abrams has announced she is to run again for the governorship next year.
Demographic changes
A rematch between Abrams and the Republican incumbent who defeated her in 2018, Brian Kemp, would be fascinating in its own right given the demographic and population changes.
However, it is the involvement of Trump in the background that makes it an even more compelling drama.
Trump lost the state of Georgia to Joe Biden in the presidential election last year and has insisted his defeat was due to voter fraud – claims rejected by Republican state officials in Georgia.
Attempts by Trump to put pressure on the Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger, a fellow Republican, to declare that he had received more votes than Biden caused consternation when audio recordings were released.
“All I want to do is this: I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have,” Trump says in the audio recording. “There’s nothing wrong with saying, you know, that you’ve recalculated.”
Kemp was a supporter of Trump. However, that did not spare him the ire of the former president, who is still reportedly furious with him for certifying Biden as the winner in Georgia.
The fallout from the presidential election has hampered Republicans in Georgia previously.
In key run-off elections for the Senate several months ago, some of Trump's allies urged Republican voters not to go to the polls given what they saw as fraud in the presidential election.
Trump himself at rallies in Georgia appeared to spend significant amounts of time talking about this alleged fraud – for which there is no evidence – rather than devoting his energies to campaigning for the Republican Senate candidates who subsequently lost.
Narrow victories
Victory in those two races gave the Democrats control, by the narrowest margin, of the Senate, allowing the party to pass domestic legislation made a priority by Biden, such as on infrastructure.
Trump reportedly spent months trying to encourage one of those defeated in the Senate run-off elections, businessman David Perdue, to enter the race for the Republican nomination for governor against the incumbent, Kemp.
Eventually last week Perdue agree to stand on the grounds that Kemp could not defeat Abrams.
Kemp is popular with Republican voters. However, the arrival on the scene of Perdue will mean diverting time and, more importantly money, in the primary election fight that otherwise would have been spent targeting the Democrats.
And in American politics the key to success is how the candidate raises and spends money.
US media are reporting that in Georgia some Republicans are forecasting that the forthcoming race for governor will be the “ugliest and nastiest” the state has ever seen.
Polls suggest that the Republicans will win big nationally in the elections next year as Americans worry about inflation and the continuing impact of Covid. Georgia could be one area where the race will now be more competitive.
There are different views on the motivation behind Trump’s intervention in Georgia and elsewhere. Some contend that he sees vengeance against those he considers to have not backed him sufficiently as more important than a victory for his party.
Other critics have a more malign view that his aim is to have in place loyal supporters in key positions in states around the country who may be more amenable to “finding” votes if there is another close presidential election in 2024.