The benches at Mount Zion Baptist Church were filling up as former President Bill Clinton prepared to make his rural campaign tour for Vice President Kamala Harris in this Democratic bastion abutting a sea of rural red Georgia.
In the back, Joseph Parker expressed his excitement that the Arkansan was on its way. However, it had been about a quarter-century since Clinton left office, and Parker stated, “Things were really different then.”
This year, he announced that he will vote for former President Donald Trump, marking the 72-year-old’s first time voting for a Republican presidential candidate.
“Trump keeps his word. Parker added, “What he says he’s going to do, he does,” despite first being hesitant to disclose his preference. “And everything is so pricey now—groceries, clothes, everything, petrol. Four years ago, it wasn’t as high. People recognize the contrast between Kamala Harris and Trump, and they want some of what they had four years before. And I do, too.
In the last weeks of the campaign, Democrats are attempting to strengthen the alliance that helped them win Georgia’s presidential election four years ago and two Senate elections in 2021. However, in a state where President Joe Biden narrowly won in 2020 with 88 percent of the Black vote, months of public polling showing some Black men leaning toward Trump is part of the reason the former president appears stronger in Georgia than four years ago.
The audience at Mount Zion on Sunday was overwhelmingly supportive of Clinton’s goal of pushing Harris to the Oval Office, cheering at times as he spoke; the church’s pastor, the Rev. Daniel Simmons, even instructed those who came forward for the altar call to listen to Clinton’s speech before going into another room for spiritual counseling.
Clinton’s visit to Georgia this weekend was limited to the state’s rural areas. The last Democratic presidential contender to win Georgia before Biden — and by nearly identical margins — Clinton says he told the Harris team, “Send me to the country.”
Harris’ work isn’t limited to rural Georgia. Back in the cities, Democrats are also attempting to gain support among voters of color, while a small faction of them leans toward Trump. As part of what it sees as its greatest operation in Georgia to date, the campaign has hosted events such as “Brothas and Brews” in Atlanta last week, as well as a gathering of Black farmers in Byromville. Harris hosted a massive rally in Atlanta shortly after taking over the ticket, which included notable Black musicians Megan Thee Stallion and Quavo.
Despite Harris’s strong support in this state, Trump is still reducing her margins, especially among those who have doubts about him.
Arthur Beauford, a 28-year-old Marietta resident, said he voted for Trump for the first time this election, despite the fact that his family members are “Democrat, all the way.” Beauford claimed that he hears similar statements from other young Black men almost every time he goes to the gym: Comments describing Trump as “funny” and “entertaining.” Even “brave,” Beauford remarked, noting that his friends frequently discuss an unidentified “they” who are out to get the former president.
“I’m not necessarily the biggest fan of Trump,” Beauford said, “but I’ll definitely take Trump over Harris,” adding that he was impressed by Trump’s business experience, while suggesting that Harris, a former prosecutor, California attorney general, and senator, was unqualified and “just seems to have been given everything” in her career.
Samuel Kem, a 25-year-old Black voter from Kennesaw, voted for Biden in 2020, citing what he described as negative press coverage of Trump’s leadership during the pandemic. However, Kem, who graduated from Savannah College of Art and Design in Atlanta last year, stated that he now lives with his family owing to the high cost of living and has altered his stance on “migration issues” in the last four years.
“I wouldn’t say he’s perfect or anything,” Kem said of Trump, who he believes should do more to address climate change. “He’ll get the job done. He’s highly skilled at maintaining mutually respectful diplomatic relations with foreign countries.”
Republicans are aiming to turn out more new Trump supporters. Several ladies from the Faith & Freedom Coalition walked through a residential area in Lilburn this week, following instructions on an app used by the organization’s huge nationwide field operation. Among the conservative Christian organization’s paid door knockers was 47-year-old Fabienne Durocher, a Haitian who came to Lawrenceville three years ago from New York. Durocher voted for Joe Biden in the last election.
“I’ll tell you the truth. I did not like him. “But now I like him,” Durocher stated about Trump. “I don’t like when Democrats discuss abortion. I do not want that. So I said, “I’m going to change my mind.” “I am going to vote for Trump.”
Durocher is one of the Creole-speaking door knockers recruited by the Faith & Freedom Coalition this election, and door-handle voting guidelines have been translated into the language in an effort to attract not only African American voters, but also Haitian Americans.
Asked about Trump’s recent false accusations about Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, eating neighbors’ household pets, Durocher said, “I keep seeing that on the TV, I don’t know if it is true. But I don’t like it when people talk negatively about Trump.”
According to Howard Franklin, a Democratic strategist in Georgia, Trump’s “wealth, celebrity, and willingness to speak unvarnished, unlike a politician — I don’t think it would do Democrats any good to deny there’s some appeal there.”
But Franklin said he is betting on what history has shown: Georgia’s Black voters, like himself, “tend to come home and vote with the Democratic Party.” He stated that whereas the Democrats’ minority outreach “used to be all barber shops and beauty salons,” they are now sending out prominent surrogates to speak with small business owners about subjects such as economic opportunity.
So what, exactly, changed in Georgia since 2020, when mid-October polling averages showed Biden with a narrow lead over Trump, and voter surveys now show Trump with a slim edge over Harris?
“Let’s just boil it down to good old fashioned buyer’s remorse,” said Jason Shepherd, the Cobb County Republican Party’s former chairman. “People have taken a financial pinch. All of Trump’s harsh tweets and wild comments suddenly seem less relevant than a good balance in your bank account.”
There were real concerns in 2020, Shepherd said, with the then-incumbent’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic — not just from his musing about injecting bleach, but his rebuke of Georgia’s popular governor, Brian Kemp, for reopening the state for business sooner than Trump wanted.
Then Trump railed against early voting measures, so much so, Shepherd recalled, that the Cobb County GOP office received calls at the end of the early voting period from people who said they didn’t cast their ballots early because Trump had advised them to vote on Election Day, but who then couldn’t vote for one Covid reason or another.
“What should I do?” they would question the county party.
And those were just the ones who bothered to track down the number for the Cobb GOP, Shepherd said, speculating that there were many more in similar positions. The county shifted leftward, from supporting Hillary Clinton by 2 points in 2016 to Biden by 14 points in 2020.
Across the state, 24,000 Georgia Republican primary voters cast ballots in the spring of 2020 but didn’t vote in the November election, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced soon after the election — saying Trump’s rhetoric on voting by mail cost him the election.