ATLANTA — There was a time in politics — 2024 to be exact — when Democratic activists and elected officials spoke in hushed tones about the decline of their aging leaders, including former President Joe Biden, if they spoke about it at all.

But with President Donald Trump back in the White House and a growing admission that Biden was not in shape to run for reelection, if he was in shape to still be president at all, the era of Democrats patiently waiting for elderly leaders to move along is over.

Nowhere in the country is that more evident than in Georgia’s 13th Congressional District, where 79-year-old Rep. David Scott is facing five ambitious primary challengers, who all say he is no longer delivering for voters he’s served since 2003.

It’s a new attitude toward Scott, who has long been respected and well liked in his district. The first Georgian and first African American to ever chair the U.S. House Agriculture Committee, the Wharton School graduate has a life story and personal relationships that lifted him above the other Democrats he routinely defeated.

But missed votes, sluggish fundraising and a rash of health challenges have even his loyal supporters wondering how much longer the goodwill for Scott among voters will continue.

“We don’t feel like we’re getting what we need” from Scott, said state Rep. Jasmine Clark, a microbiologist from Gwinnett County who announced her candidacy earlier this week.

Clark’s decision to jump into the race caught some Democrats by surprise since challenging the congressman means she’s leaving a state House seat that seemed to be hers for as long as she wanted it. But she told me that’s exactly why she’s running against Scott.

“There’s nothing wrong with saying, ‘I’ve done the work, and I want to let someone else step up.’ I wish more people in Congress would take that approach,” she said.

Within 48 hours of her announcement, Clark said she had raised more than $100,000 from more than 1,500 donors. As of Scott’s last disclosure in April, he had reported just two individual donors for this cycle and just over $68,000 cash on hand.

Another Scott challenger, state Sen. Emanuel Jones, called the congressman’s physical decline in recent years “the worst kept secret in politics.” He pointed to a well-publicized incident last year when Scott yelled at a Politico photographer for taking his picture in front of the Capitol while he was in a wheelchair.

“That’s not how we should be as elected officials,” Jones said. “We all have our moment, and I certainly pray that when it’s my time to go that I’m not going to be hanging around one day longer than I should because these are not our positions. They belong to those that we represent.”

But Democrats’ own seniority system in Washington has long encouraged members to stay in office as long as possible. Unlike Republicans, who have self-imposed term limits on committee leadership positions, Democrats have almost always awarded seniority with power. The longer they stayed, the more powerful they became, including Scott.

But that changed in December, when he was one of three senior Democrats to face challenges from younger members to remain as leaders of powerful House committees. Scott lost his race to remain as ranking member of the Agriculture Committee. The two other Democrats who faced challenges, Rep. Raul Grijalva of Arizona and Rep. Gerald Connolly of Virginia, have both since died of cancer, leaving their offices vacant until special elections can fill their seats.

Everton Blair, a former member of the Gwinnett County School Board with a Ph.D. in education from Harvard University, decided to run against Scott after attending a town hall meeting hosted by the congressman this spring.

After standing to ask Scott how he planned to safeguard federal funding in the district during Trump’s second term, Scott yelled, “Hold on! I don’t know who sent y’all. But we got these folks here, who are providing answers. And I’m doing this. That’s what I’m doing.” Blair left alarmed.

“Right after that town hall, I called a lot of the people who are in elected office in the area, including Representative Clark, to say, ‘Hey, this is crazy. I think I’m going to do this. What do you think?’” he said. Everyone he spoke to encouraged him to run, he said.

Blair was quick to point out that it’s not Scott’s age that he’s criticizing — it’s the leadership he thinks he’s delivering.

“It’s an acute indictment on what we need to see in our leadership right now,” he said. “When he loses his senior ranking position in this committee, when he is no longer able to be present, when he does not communicate, he doesn’t do many town halls, he’s not actually a visible candidate, and that’s why you see people running like it’s an open seat.”

Jones said the same. “I believe that the community, the 13th District, wants to be able to reach out and get a direct response from the person that they elect, rather than relying on aides and other staff to respond to their requests.”

In many ways, Scott has the toughest race he’s ever faced. And none of the other Democrats plan to make it easy.

When I reached Jones on the phone this week, he was in St. Simons to be at an event with the Georgia Chamber of Commerce, which endorsed him in his last campaign. Blair was running to the dry cleaners to pick up suits he’d just had pressed for more campaign appearances this week. And Clark was working the phones after being at her daughter’s basketball game late the night before.

Although I reached out to Scott’s office several times requesting interview or comment for this column, I never heard back.

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