The congressman from the 12th District is Democrat John Barrow, whose family has been rooted in Georgia for seven generations. Of the nine House Democrats representing states in the Deep South, he is the only one left who is white. His father handled school desegregation cases as a lawyer and as a Superior Court judge in the Athens area. A graduate of the University of Georgia and Harvard Law School, Barrow became a trial lawyer and made his name in local politics by winning four terms as an Athens-Clarke city-county commissioner. In 2004, he decided to run against Republican Rep. Max Burns, who had won the 12th District seat in an upset in 2002. Read More

The congressman from the 12th District is Democrat John Barrow, whose family has been rooted in Georgia for seven generations. Of the nine House Democrats representing states in the Deep South, he is the only one left who is white. His father handled school desegregation cases as a lawyer and as a Superior Court judge in the Athens area. A graduate of the University of Georgia and Harvard Law School, Barrow became a trial lawyer and made his name in local politics by winning four terms as an Athens-Clarke city-county commissioner. In 2004, he decided to run against Republican Rep. Max Burns, who had won the 12th District seat in an upset in 2002.

Although most Democratic voters in the district are African-American, all four candidates in the Democratic primary were white. Barrow raised more than $700,000 and, with the endorsements of former Sen. Max Cleland, the Sierra Club, and the Georgia AFL-CIO, extended his appeal beyond his home base. He won 51% of the vote and all 14 counties, enough to avoid a runoff. In the general election, Barrow distanced himself from Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry and the national party. He focused on Burns’ support of a national retail sales tax to replace the income tax, attacking the proposal as anti-family and labeling it “the Max Tax.” Burns accused Barrow of distorting his proposal and called his opponent a “liberal trial attorney” controlled by “Atlanta party bosses.” Burns ran well in rural areas, but Barrow won big margins among African-American voters in the three counties that cast two-thirds of the district’s votes—62% in Richmond, 58% in Chatham, and 58% in Clarke. Overall, Barrow won 52%-48%.

In the House, Barrow ranks among the most conservative Democrats. He is a member of the fiscally conservative Blue Dog Democrats, and supported fellow Blue Dog Heath Shuler of North Carolina over liberal Nancy Pelosi for Democratic leader after their party lost its majority in 2010. He voted against the 2010 health care overhaul, contending it would cost too much and fail to halt abuses by insurance companies. He took a hard line against illegal immigrants and cast votes in 2007 against proposals to limit war funding in Iraq. Also in 2007, Democratic leaders gave him a leading role in pushing for an increase in the minimum wage, and he secured a seat on the powerful Energy and Commerce Committee. But he declined to back the 2009 energy and climate change bill, which, with health care, was the other major measure to emerge from Energy and Commerce in the 111th Congress (2009-10). He complained that the national renewable energy mandate was too high. Although bill sponsors agreed to weaken the standard, Barrow still voted against it. In 2008, after an explosion at a sugar refinery near Savannah, Barrow won House passage of his bill to force the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to tighten rules on industrial dust.

Barrow’s political life was made more difficult by the 2005 redistricting, which moved his Clarke County base into the heavily Republican 10th District. He said he would run in the new district that included the largest part of his former district, which turned out to be the 12th. Barrow moved his residence to Savannah and emphasized his independence. “No boss, no leader, no caucus can tell me how to vote. And none of them has,” he declared. Burns ran against him and got fundraising help from national Republicans. The outcome was even closer this time, 50.3%-49.7%. Barrow won only eight of 22 counties, but he captured 62% of the vote in Chatham and 65% in Richmond, the two largest counties.

In 2008, Barrow faced state Sen. Regina Thomas, an African-American, in the Democratic primary. Although a liberal group ran ads criticizing Barrow for supporting President George W. Bush on tax cuts and the Iraq war, he won 76%-24%. In November, he won re-election easily, 66%-34%, against Republican John Stone. Two years later, angered by Barrow’s vote against the health care overhaul, Thomas returned for a rematch. However, she again had little success raising money to compete with Barrow, who won the 2010 primary with 60%. Barrow’s general election opponent was Ray McKinney, a Republican nuclear engineer and a favorite of tea party activists. He drew from the GOP playbook by trying to tie Barrow to Pelosi, but the lawmaker cited his record of independence. Even so, he left nothing to chance. The Savannah Morning News reported that he sent mailers to some voters boasting of working “hand-in-hand” with President Obama and a different one to others saying he “stood up to Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats in Washington.” He won with 58%, escaping the fate of many other Blue Dogs that year. But he is considered vulnerable to a Republican-orchestrated redistricting effort in 2012.