Carolyn Bourdeaux is an American professor and political candidate from the state of Georgia. She has been a Professor at the Andrew YoungSchool of Public Policy at Georgia State University since 2003. In 2018, she ran for Georgia's 7th congressional district, coming within 433 votes of defeating the incumbent Republican, Rep. Rob Woodall, in what was the closest congressional race in the entire country. On February 7, 2019, Rob Woodall announced he would retire at the end of his current term, meaning the seat would be open in 2020. That same day, Bourdeaux announced her intentions to once again seek the seat.
Bourdeaux worked as a political aide to Ron Wyden for four years, when he served in the United States House of Representatives and then in the United States Senate. In 2003, she became an associate professor at Georgia State University. From 2007 to 2010, she took a leave of absence to be Director of Georgia's Senate Budget and Evaluation Office, where she worked in a nonpartisan role to help the state balance the budget during the Great Recession. The Georgia State Senate later honored her for significant service to the state of Georgia with Senate Resolution 1598. Following her time there, she returned to the Andrew Young School and founded the Center for State and Local Finance.
2018 U.S. House election
In the 2018 elections, Bourdeaux ran for the United States House of Representatives in. She faced a six-way primary for the Democratic Party nomination. She came in first place in the May primary and earned a spot in the July runoff. She then won the primary runoff on July 24 and won the Democratic Nomination. She then faced Republican Rob Woodall in the November 6general election. On September 14, 2018, Bourdeaux was added to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee's highly competitive Red-to-Blue program. She was endorsed by EMILY's List, End Citizens United, League of Conservation Voters, Sierra Club, Planned Parenthood, the Georgia State AFL-CIO, Progressive Turnout Project and more. She was also endorsed by Barack Obama, Congressman John Lewis, Congressman Hank Johnson, Ambassador Andrew Young, Senator Max Cleland, Senator Sam Nunn, Governor Martin O'Malley, Mayor Shirley Franklin, and dozens of other local elected officials and leaders. The race was considered to be a sleeper race, but it received more attention later in the election as Bourdeaux continued to outraise Woodall and as Democrats picked up momentum nationwide. In the third quarter of 2018, Bourdeaux outraised Woodall by a margin of more than 3-1, raising over $1 million. The election continued to be close all the way through election day. On election night, the race was too close to call, and the winner of this race was still unclear. Just a few hours after it was filed on November 15, U.S. District Judge Leigh Martin May denied an emergency motion aimed at forcing Gwinnett County to count previously rejected absentee ballots in the razor-thin 7th Congressional District race. On November 21, following a recount, Bourdeaux conceded defeat.
2020 U.S. House election
On February 7, 2019, Bourdeaux announced that she would run again for the same seat in 2020. She was quickly endorsed by several key Georgia politicians, including Congressman John Lewis. Within the first week of her campaign, she announced raising over $100,000. In the first quarter of 2019, she outraised all other congressional challengers in the country, with a total of over $350,000.
Personal life
Bourdeaux is married to Jeffrey Skodnick, a sales manager at LexisNexis. They live in Suwanee, Georgia, and have one son.
