A decade ago it was a small group of Democrats, some of whom were present during his talk, that he bounced the idea off of running, which is why Allen said he wanted to come by and say thank you. Allen recalled speaking with former Gov.Roy Barnes, then-House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams, and a couple of others.

“And they all looked at me and said ‘You’re probably crazy. You’re not going to win, but we’ll be with you.’” He singled out such activists as the late Cobb County educator Beth Farokhi who volunteered to go canvassing with him his first time.

“For someone like her to take time out to invest that in me, you may not believe it, but it has shaped so much of what I do,” he said, urging party activists to do the same with candidates running this year.

“If you can take two, three hours to give them that ‘Beth experience,’ love on ‘em, talk to them, nurture them, it will make a big difference.”

Because of encouragers like Farokhi, Allen didn’t quit after his first, unsuccessful run against Rep. Rich Golick, R-Smyrna. In that first attempt, in 2014, Allen received just 39.8% of the vote. He ran again in 2016, and lost again, but performed better with 46.5% of the vote. Third time was the charm in 2018. Golick chose to retire, and Allen was elected over Republican candidate Matt Bentleywith 54.6% of the vote.

“We were finally able to flip the seat. Flipped it from being a 20-year Republican- held seat, and then 2020 (against Republican Taryn Bowman with 58%) of the vote. … And don’t let anyone lie to you and tell that all of these gains that we have had in Cobb County and across the state are because of demographic changes. It is because of people like you in this room have worked your a– off for the last five or six years that we have had the gains that we have.”

That demographics have had nothing to do with Democratic gains in Cobb and Georgia didn’t seem reasonable, so we rang Kerwin Swint, director of the School of Government and International Affairs at Kennesaw State University, to get his take.

“Yeah, he’s completely wrong,” Swint said. “For over a decade, political scientists and sociologists, the people who track data like that have seen the demographic tides coming: An increasingly diverse state, an increasingly transient state, people moving here from Pennsylvania, Illinois, California, and it’s becoming a bluer state and demographics really have been leading the way. There’s just no denying that. I know politics is politics, but when you look at the data, he’s just wrong.”

But back to Allen’s talk. Allen said it used to be an act of God to try to fill a slate of Cobb County Democrats.

“And now we have almost every race contested, but not just in the general, but contested in the primary. That’s what you call belief. This is not a blue wave. These are the people who believe in progressive values that are stompin’ in the water and that’s what’s causing the tsunami.”

Allen’s run for statewide office is not a move to get away from Cobb, he said.“What I want to do is bring everyone in Georgia to the greatness of Cobb. So we’re going to take our message of what we’ve done in Cobb County and take it to every corner of this state, because the values, the principles, the energy, the effort, the passion, all of those things we exhibit in this room. The belief is there. So I want you to continue to believe with me, to work with me and all of these other candidates to get them elected in 2022.”

Allen gave a shout out to former state Sen. Doug Stoner, D-Smyrna, who is running to succeed him. Allen said he tells the story of all the work he had to do to flip HD 40 because Stoner faces “a very credible Republican” in November. That Republican is emergency physician Fun Fong. (Allen didn’t mention that Stoner must first beat Democrat Thomas Casez, a software engineer, in the May 24 primary.) “And I am not going to go down quietly and not make sure that this seat does not flip back,” Allen added. “And as the chair of the Cobb County Delegation until January 8 of 2023, I’m going to do everything I can in the general election to make sure we get every Democrat on the ballot elected in November.” Alleviate apathy wherever one can and encourage Democrats to vote, Allen urged. “As I go around campaigning, this has nothing to do with Joe Biden. Georgia got Georgia. This has nothing to do with Virginia. Has nothing to do with anywhere else. We need Democrats to turn out up and down our ticket. We were 50,000 votes away from having a Gov. Abrams that would have vetoed these maps,” he said, referring to the redistricting maps signed into law by Gov. Brian Kemp.

If Allen is suggesting that this year’s election in Georgia has nothing to do with President Biden, that isn’t accurate either, according to Swint. “Midterm election years are almost always years where the out party picks up seats,” Swint said. The president’s party usually suffers in the midterms. That’s normal. But you put on top of that Joe Biden’s unpopularity in Georgia and elsewhere — if it stays the same, that’s going to drag down Democratic candidates even further and make it that much harder for Democrats to swim upstream, so to speak.” If Biden’s approval rating stays in the mid- to high-30s in Georgia, Swint believes it will cost Democrats running for state executive offices and legislative seats. If he pops back up into the mid-40s by November, it would take a lot of pressure off some of those candidates.

“So we’ll see where he is come October. In general, the trend is pretty clear: if you have an unpopular president, that’s a drag on the party’s candidates up and down the ballot.”