When state House and Milledgeville City Council candidates speak up to share their vision with the satiated masses Thursday after the Deep Roots Festival BBQ Cook-Off Sneak Peek, they will be joining in a tradition possibly as old as Georgia politics itself.

Although it may be waning today, Georgia politics have long been carried out over a plate of one of the state’s favorite dishes: pulled-pork barbecue, or sometimes fried fish.

B. Phinizy Spalding Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Georgia James C. Cobb told The Union-Recorder that the tradition of hosting entire communities of potential voters at a campaign barbecue dates back to well before the Civil War, but probably came into its prime once fencing laws prevented farmers from allowing their livestock to roam an open range.

The campaign barbecue probably achieved it widest use as a political tool during the two decades following the last years of the Great Depression when Democratic gubernatorial candidates traveled rural portions of the state to exploit the county unit system, which unfairly increased the influence of rural areas on the Democratic primary by deciding the election on votes based upon the number of state legislators seated by each county and not the popular vote statewide.

“At that time barbecue was a luxury, and it became a big deal to go to a [former Gov. Eugene] Talmadge barbecue and to eat his barbecue,” Cobb said. “It was great sport, great entertainment and it was a masculine pursuit because of the prevalence of whiskey and the possibility of getting into a fist fight.”

Political barbecues have taken such prominence in some gubernatorial elections that winners and losers alike have staked their chances on the fate of their campaign gatherings. Former Gov. Marvin Griffin once famously summed up his failed 1962 election bid saying: “Everybody that ate my barbecue I don’t believe voted for me.”

These eating events have made their way into this year’s special election as every candidate has hosted some kind of event that has gotten them in front of hungry voters. E. Culver “Rusty” Kidd was the first to hold a barbecue, hosting voters to a plate of Old Clinton barbecue at Georgia College & State University’s West Campus athletic complex. Just this weekend, Angie Gheesling-McCommon hosted a fish fry at the Tri-County Shrine Club. And Casey Tucker will hold a get-out-and-vote barbecue at Central City Park at 1 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 1.

And there’s no doubt food has played some role in the more-recently-popular house party-styled events candidate Darrell Black is hosting to help get his message out.

Cobb speculates that more-stringent campaign finance reporting practices have helped lead to the decline in popularity of the large campaign rallies in which candidates would pass the hat around to raise money. And to some extent, that is a shame he says.

“[In moving away from the barbecues,] people are losing the impression that they’re getting through to the candidate [on a personal level] and that their vote is valued,” he said. “Now you either get these huge impersonal rallies or you see the candidate in the dining and living rooms of upper-middle class families soliciting campaign contributions. In a way it has taken the democratic aspect out of political campaigning.”

But Thursday’s candidate forum should help revive some of those campaign memories of old, even though the Deep Roots Sneak Peek will be a separate event that goes on before the political forum.

Thursday’s political forum for candidates in the state House of Representatives and Milledgeville City Council District 1 races starts at 8:30 p.m. Thursday in the tent set up for the Sneak Peek behind City Hall in downtown Milledgeville. It is free and open to the public after the completion of the second seating of the BBQ Cook Off Sneak Peek, which ends at 8 p.m.