Why the democrats will debate at atlanta’s tyler perry studios this month

Tyler Perry’s huge new Atlanta facility got the nod over a suburban venue. Photo: Paul R. Giunta/Getty Images Early speculation about the location of the November 20 Democratic presidential

candidate debate had focused on some site in the northern suburbs of Atlanta, the newly competitive area where the Democrats picked up one U.S. House seat in 2018 and nearly nabbed another.

There is, in fact, a spanking new 1,070-seat event venue called City Springs Theatre smack dab in the center of those suburbs (in Sandy Springs, which used to be nicknamed “the Golden

Ghetto” and fought annexation by Atlanta for many years) that looked perfect for a debate. But instead the Washington _Post_ and MSNBC have decided to hold the fifth candidate debate at

Tyler Perry Studios, the actor and mogul’s $250 million complex recently opened on part of the closed Fort McPherson complex on the south side of Atlanta, the traditionally disadvantaged and

overwhelmingly African-American part of the city. The symbolism of the choice reflects the two different avenues generally considered open to Democrats for regaining a majority in this

rapidly growing and increasingly diverse state: expanding the party’s mostly African-American base in cities like Atlanta or raiding college-educated white voters in the burbs. That choice

is, of course, an oversimplification: Tyler Perry is one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in the Empire State of the South, and those burbs are no longer lily-white. Indeed, the new

member of Congress from the north Atlanta region, Lucy McBath (locked into a rematch with Karen Handel, whom she defeated in 2018), is African-American. Georgia Democrats need to improve

voter registration, base mobilization, and swing-voter persuasion everywhere, simultaneously. Having said that, the decision to hold the debate in Perry’s huge facility is an appropriate

acknowledgment of its importance to both city and state efforts (as bipartisan as anything is in this polarized state) to turn Atlanta and Georgia into major independent entertainment

centers. Local Republicans have tried to make the debate-venue choice a matter of Democratic obeisance to godless Hollywood elitism. But as Jim Galloway of the Atlanta _Journal-Constitution_

notes, that represents a laughable misstatement of what Perry is doing: > After word of the decision leaked out … the person in charge of > the Twitter account of the Cobb County GOP 

tapped out the accusation > that “the DNC has chosen a venue that showcases elite Hollywood > values.” >  > In a word, no. >  > Tyler Perry isn’t Hollywood. He has become 

the foremost > African-American alternative to Hollywood. It is the point of his > operation, as he explained at the BET Awards ceremony in June — to > an audience frustrated by 

Hollywood’s on-again, off-again attempt > to diversify. >  > “While everybody else is fighting for a seat at the table, talking > about ‘#OscarsSoWhite, #OscarsSoWhite,’ I said, 

‘Y’all go > ahead and do that. While you’re fighting for a seat at the table, > I’ll be down in Atlanta building my own,’” Perry told the > crowd. “Because what I know for sure is 

that if I could just build > this table, God will prepare it for me in the presence of my > enemies.” Perry obviously did not join a Hollywood-based boycott of Georgia that developed

after the state passed a draconian abortion law, but he did make it clear that he personally “don’t believe any man should be able to tell a woman what she can do with her body or

reproductive organs.” That was enough to make his venue all right to Georgia and national Democrats. Don’t be surprised if he’s very present at the debate.