When Tennessee Democrats meet in a week to pick a new state party chairman, they will have Georgia on their minds —specifically the political transformation by Democrats there that saw two Democratic challengers unseat two Republican U.S. Senators this week.

The wins in Senate runoff elections by Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock gave Democrats a majority in the Senate with the vote of Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, toppling the Senate’s Republican majority.

Georgia also went for Democratic President-elect Joe Biden in November after being a key part of President Donald Trump’s path to the White House four years earlier.

“That was not an overnight thing,” former Shelby County Democratic Party Chairman Corey Strong said on The Daily Memphian Politics Podcast. Strong was among politicos who went to Georgia to work on the Ossof and Warnock campaign efforts, including door-to-door canvassing.

“That was 10 years organizing at a state level to make sure to fund people who were organizing on the ground,” he said. “That is something the Tennessee Democratic Party can do.”

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But Strong cautioned that the effort, led by former Georgia state legislator and gubernatorial contender Stacey Abrams, can’t be borrowed wholesale to work in Tennessee.

Tennessee Democrats haven’t won a statewide office since 2006 when Phil Bredesen was elected to a second term as governor.

“We have to submit to the fact that this is a 6- to 10-year process to really turn Tennessee into a purple state,” Strong said of what is now a red state. Shelby County is the biggest patch of blue along with Davidson and Haywood counties and some purple in Hamilton County.

Ossoff and Warnock are considered progressives politically but differ on issues including Medicaid for all and the “new green deal.” Strong points to a Democratic breakthrough in Louisiana with two-term governor John Bel Edwards, who is more politically moderate.

“The point is what those candidates look like and how you support them and how you help them get elected is not necessarily always going to be the most progressive candidate,” Strong said. “It’s got to be something that fits Tennessee. I think there are plenty of issues in Tennessee that you can galvanize around the candidate, but the candidate might not look like it does in Georgia.”

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Strong, who served on the state party’s executive committee before becoming local party chairman, says the state party also needs to commit to bring activists and organizers who have been crossing over into the retail politics of campaigns in recent years into its statewide campaign machinery.

“I can tell you from experience, the Tennessee Democratic Party is not particularly interested in that,” he said.

“You have people who feel like the only way to talk about these issues is to be an activist,” Strong said.

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“If they organized those people and paid them, brought them on payroll — not necessarily through the Tennessee Democratic Party, but through a coalition of organizations —and everybody felt like they were singing from the same sheet of music, everybody would be willing to give a little.”

That includes not automatically writing off white rural voters to Republicans seen as too conservative, along with continuing to pursue new Black voters and turning out that vote as a whole.

“When you don’t concede the rural vote … you have to have messaging that resonates out there, and that messaging has to be jobs-related,” Strong said.

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Among the contenders to lead the state party are some Memphians — state Rep. London Lamar and activist Theryn Bond, who managed Torrey Harris’ upset of state Rep. John Deberry in the 2020 elections. Also running is Hendrell Remus, active in several Memphis campaigns over the years.

The party’s executive committee will select the new chair at a Jan. 16 meeting.

“It’s going to be tough because there are several factions across the state of Tennessee,” Strong said, expressing a desire to see the state party move away from a Nashville focus in its leadership.

“I think we have some cliques and some enclaves in the state Democratic Party,” he said. “You need a chairman in the state of Tennessee who can make people rural, suburban and urban feel like they are part of the team. That doesn’t happen overnight.”