Twenty-Seven Votes

Across the country on Nov. 3, twelve legislative chambers changed party control, all of them to Democrats, Ballotpedia counted. In Georgia, the number that may matter most is 27.

That is how far Republican Rep. Soo Hong trailed Democrat Chris Luchey in House District 103 in unofficial returns, Atlanta News First reported, close enough for a recount. House District 151 is headed to a Dec. 1 runoff because nobody cleared 50 percent. Republican Mike Cheokas took 49.43 percent and Democrat Ethan Wolfe 38.97, with an independent taking the rest. Georgia Democrats reached the 91 seats they need for a majority in the 180-seat House, but the cushion is thin enough to count by hand.

Twenty-seven votes is a church congregation on a good Sunday. It is a high school homecoming crowd. It may also decide how secure the new majority's gavel is for the next two years.

The woman who went home crying

Rep. Carolyn Hugley of Columbus has served in the House for 34 years. If Democrats hold their majority, she could become the first woman and the first person of color to serve as speaker, Atlanta News First reported. Her party has not run the chamber since 2004.

She described those years in one sentence: "I've been at these elections a lot of times when we went home crying."

That is the witness this election deserves: one legislator who kept coming back to a building where her side lost, year after year, and who may now be asked to lead it. The House votes on its speaker when the General Assembly convenes on Jan. 11.

The machine underneath

Georgia did not hand Democrats a clean sweep. Keisha Lance Bottoms won the governor's race, so Democrats will hold the governor's office and the House in January. But Republicans kept the Senate, 29 to 27, and in Georgia a bill needs 29 votes to pass that chamber. Democrat Josh McLaurin won the lieutenant governor's race and will preside over a Senate his party does not control. Analyst Ben Taylor predicted in September that McLaurin's power "will very likely be stripped" if Republicans held the Senate, Atlanta News First reported.

So read the machine for what it is. A Democratic House and governor on one side. A Republican Senate holding exactly the votes it needs on the other. Every budget, every bill and every appointment now runs through a narrow door, and both parties hold a key.

The case they are owed

Republicans have earned a hearing, and they have made their case with restraint. Outgoing Speaker Jon Burns said his caucus remains "strong, resilient and committed," noting that "a few key seats remain within the recount margin." Gov. Brian Kemp, who has two months left in office, said he will honor the results and will not call a special session on executive powers or redistricting. "The voters of our state have spoken," he said.

That restraint matters. Other states have watched outgoing majorities use their last weeks to trim the power of the people who beat them. Kemp chose not to, and he deserves credit for it in print.

What we owe each other

There is an old instruction in the book of Micah: "what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?" (Micah 6:8, KJV). Humility is the word Georgia's new majority should keep in its pocket. A 91-seat majority that may rest on 27 votes is not a mandate to remake a state. It is a loan from the voters, and the interest is due in two years.

The philosopher T.M. Scanlon offered a test for any choice made with power: could you justify it to the person with the least power in it, on grounds they could not reasonably reject? In Georgia that person is easy to find. It is the voter in District 103 whose ballot sits inside a margin smaller than a Sunday choir. Whichever way the recount falls, that voter is owed a House that governs as if every neighbor's vote counted the same.

Hugley went home crying for years. If the gavel is hers in January, the measure of her speakership will be whether the people on the losing side of 27 votes ever have reason to.

Results are unofficial until certified. This op-ed is part of The State's series on the 12 legislative chambers that changed party control on Nov. 3, all of them to Democrats, according to Ballotpedia.