You wouldn’t know it by counting the number of drivers occupying the left lanes on local roads, but Fayette County is one of the most right-leaning counties in the country, according to a Washington, D.C.-based news website, The Daily Caller.
Fayette is ranked number 7 on that website’s list of “the most conservative-friendly” counties in America. In Georgia, only Forsyth County — at number 2 on the list — leans farther right than Fayette, The Daily Caller says.
Here’s what writer Aleks Kulczuga says about Fayette:
“The south part of Atlanta is traditionally the poorer part of the city, but the southern suburbs of the city are just about as prosperous as anywhere else in northern Georgia. Peachtree City, appropriately named for an Atlanta suburb, was recently rated the 8th best place in America to live. The town is built around a series of golf-cart paths instead of roads, high-school kids are encouraged to drive the carts instead of cars to school. It has a higher percentage of veterans than most really wealthy counties.”
The criteria for ranking include the following:
• How counties have voted in the past two presidential elections
• Median household income, factoring in cost of living
• Home ownership percentage
• Married family percentage
• Civilian veteran percentage
• State unionization laws, whether a right-to-work state or mandatory union state
• State tax burden – state income taxes, factoring in available deductions
• State concealed weapons laws, ease of carrying weapon legally
• State weekly religious attendance, as measured by Pew (poll)
• State abortion laws, as measured by Americans United for Life
• Intangibles, such things as a long conservative history, an ingrained military culture, prominent right-wing politicians
• A “county” must be a county-level unit, which includes parishes in Louisiana, independent cities in Virginia and boroughs/municipalities in Alaska, and the population must be more than 50,000 as of 2008.
The most conservative-friendly county in the U.S.A.? According to The Daily Caller, it’s Williamson County, Tenn., just south of Nashville.
The ratings obviously are influenced by some assumptions, the major one being that voting Republican equates to being conservative.
That represents a change from about three decades ago, when every officeholder in Fayette County was reliably Democrat. In those days, being a Democrat and being conservative were not mutually exclusive states of being.
The Daily Caller (dailycaller.com) was founded by Tucker Carlson, well-known for his bowties and conservative politics, and Neil Patel, former chief policy advisor to then-Vice President Dick Cheney.
