In an affluent Atlanta suburb, Biden and Trump work to win over wary Georgia voters

FAYETTEVILLE, Ga. — President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump will meet Thursday for their first general election debate in Georgia, the battleground that yielded the narrowest margin of any state in 2020 and became the epicenter of Trump’s efforts to overturn Biden’s election.

Now, in their rematch, Georgia will test which man will be best able to put together a winning coalition despite their respective weaknesses. Each must convince grumpy voters in places like Fayette County, a suburb south of Atlanta, that they are less scary than the alternative.

Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for the third straight time, has been convicted of felony crimes and is awaiting sentencing and three more criminal trials, including in Atlanta. That legal risk could exacerbate his struggles with moderate Republicans and independents, some of whom abandoned him as he helped dismantle the constitutional right to abortion and refused to accept defeat in 2020.

Biden, the Democratic incumbent, has presided over an inflationary economy, grappled with a war in the Middle East that divides Democrats and failed to resolve immigration issues along the states’ southern border -United. He faces possible defections from non-white and younger voters.

Fayette, one of Georgia’s wealthiest counties, has long been home to retirees and Delta Air Lines employees looking for housing near the Atlanta airport. Today, it is also a stronghold of Georgia’s state-subsidized film industry. At the Trillith complex, an upscale town and growing movie studio, workers can be heard discussing the latest Captain America movie being filmed there.

Like other Atlanta suburbs, the county of 120,000 is leaning left. Democrats have not yet unseated Fayette’s Republican majority, but they came close in December 2022, when Democratic U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock won 49.5% of Fayette’s vote by defeating Republican Herschel Walker.

“We believe the path to the presidency runs through Fayette County this year,” said Joe Clark, chairman of the Fayette County Democratic Party and member of the Fayetteville City Council.

The Trump campaign opened its first Georgia campaign office in Fayetteville on June 13.

“They want to try to flip our county,” warned Brian Jack, a former Trump aide who recently clinched the Republican Party nomination for a Republican-leaning congressional seat.

Statewide, Republicans say Georgia still leans in their favor. Yes, Democrats scored four statewide victories in Georgia, starting with Biden in 2020, then Jon Ossoff and Warnock scored two victories in a 2021 runoff that secured Democratic control of the Senate American, and culminated with Warnock’s reelection in 2022. But Republican Gov. Brian Kemp won a second gubernatorial term in 2022 against Democrat Stacy Abrams by a comfortable margin, sweeping polling places along the way.

Lauren Groh-Wargo, Abrams’ top strategist, said Democrats were slow to engage in Georgia in 2020. Both camps spent heavily this year.

“This is the first time since the 1990s that Georgia has been a leading presidential election state on both sides of the aisle, since both campaigns began,” Groh-Wargo said.

Both sides have work to do. Many voters, Democrats and Republicans, say they are discouraged by the Trump-Biden rematch. Some say they’re not even sure they’ll vote.

The independent candidacy of Robert Kennedy Jr. is another wild card. Kennedy hasn’t been certified for the ballot, but he could make Georgia even harder to predict.

Some once-solid Republicans have taken to splitting their tickets. Trump and Walker showed weakness in metro Atlanta, although Kemp remained strong.

Quentin Fulks, a southwest Georgia native who is Biden’s top deputy campaign manager and who managed Warnock’s 2022 campaign, estimates that Warnock won 9% of Republican voters.

“The quality of the candidates matters,” said Republican strategist Brian Robinson. Trump triggered “a real realignment” that drew working-class voters without college degrees to Republicans, Robinson said, but pushed away college-educated voters.

Some of these voters still “want or are willing to vote Republican,” but only under the right circumstances. In Georgia’s Republican presidential primary in March, about 78,000 voters — most of them in metro Atlanta — voted for Nikki Haley over Trump, even after Haley suspended her campaign. Haley’s total was more than six times Biden’s margin of victory in Georgia in 2020.

Fayette ranks seventh among Georgia’s 159 counties among voters who supported Kemp but not Walker. Haley won 13.2 percent statewide, but nearly 19 percent in Fayette County.

Rhonda Quillian, shopping at a Peachtree City farmers’ market, supported Haley. She says neither Biden nor Trump seems like an option for her. She plans to not vote at all.

Quillian said she liked Trump’s policies after voting for him in 2016, but grew sour on him, especially after the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol.

“If he wasn’t so selfish, I would vote for him in a minute because of politics,” Quillian said. “But he’s a little scary when he starts talking and he’s trying to overturn the election and he’s anti-Constitution and, you know, ‘I am the law.’ I’m sorry, no, it’s a democratic republic.

For Biden, the challenge is to replicate the coalition that gave him a razor-thin margin. Responding to warnings from Georgia Democrats that he must engage with Black voters, the president has visited Georgia regularly and Vice President Kamala Harris has made five trips to Georgia this year.

“We need to talk to black voters in urban and rural areas of Georgia,” Fulks said. “That’s where I start.”

Trump has bragged about his ability to make inroads among black voters. Robinson acknowledged that Trump was unlikely to get even a fifth of black voters, but said he wouldn’t necessarily be required to do so: Black voters typically make up about 30 percent of ballots cast in voting in Georgia. If some black voters stay home or if Biden’s share declines even a little, Trump could benefit.

Deidra Ellington, a counselor who lives in Fayetteville, calls the choice between Biden and Trump “thin pickings.” Ellington, who is black, says she no longer feels allegiance to either party.

“It’s almost to a point where you’re not even able to live paycheck to paycheck,” Ellington said. “You get the first paycheck, then you borrow in between before the next paycheck.”

In an April poll by The Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, more Democrats said Biden had hurt than he had helped on the cost of living and immigration. The Biden campaign has tried to ease that pain.

“The president deeply understands what Americans are going through, as well as the fact that there is still work to be done,” Fulks said.

Republicans, meanwhile, aim to turn the election into a referendum on Biden’s handling of the economy.

“My argument is: Are you happy with $4 a gallon for gas and $6 for a jar of mayonnaise? If not, it wasn’t like that when Trump was in office,” said Suzanne Brown, a Peachtree City Council member who campaigned for Republicans this spring.

Democrats say they are out-organizing Trump, aiming to turn out fringe Democrats and persuade independents and moderate Republicans to support Biden. The campaign has about a dozen offices and 75 staffers across the state, including some in Fayetteville.

“I think Trump underestimates the power of the organization,” Fulks said.

That’s not the case, said Republican National Committee spokesman Henry Scavone. He claims the Trump campaign has gone from zero to a dozen since June 13.

Republicans, aware that voters are in a sour mood, are optimistic but not arrogant about places like Fayette County.

“If the election were held today, Donald Trump would almost certainly win here,” Robinson said. “But the elections are not happening today.”

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Barrow reported from Atlanta.