ATLANTA — Republicans have lofty expectations for President Donald Trump’s runoff eve rally in Dalton.
U.S. Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler want Trump to promote their campaigns and persuade supporters who believe his falsehoods about widespread voter fraud to cast ballots in Tuesday’s runoffs for control of the U.S. Senate.
But state Republicans fear he can also inflict more harm than good by continuing to claim a “rigged” election and deepening his war with state GOP officials that will threaten the sense of unity that the two incumbents are trying to project.
And as Trump prepares for his final campaign rally of the election season, no one can be certain what he’ll do or say in the heart of deeply-conservative northwest Georgia territory where he’ll be hailed by thousands of supporters as a conquering hero.
What’s certain is that the two incumbents sorely need his help. Analysts from both sides of the party divide predict that Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock have built a formidable cushion in early-voting, and Republicans need a hefty election day turnout to erase the gap.
Trump’s visit aims for the heart of GOP-dominated parts of the state where voter participation is lagging.
First up, he’ll face a problem of his own doing: After months of Trump attacking Georgia’s elections, there is now a consistent belief among some Georgia Republicans that the November election in the state was either stolen, bought, sabotaged or otherwise subject to fraud.
It’s hard to document exactly how pervasive those views are, but a SurveyUSA poll commissioned by 11Alive News in December offers a clue. It showed that just one in five Republican voters in Georgia believe President-elect Joe Biden won the election fair and square.
And of the Georgians who said they’re not voting in the runoffs, a disproportionate number are conservative. Of those who identify as “very conservative,” 55% say they are not voting in the runoff elections because “the voting process is rigged.”
“I’m going to vote in the runoffs, but I’m beginning to wonder if it’s going to be credible. I’ve lived here all my life, and I’d never imagine this would happen in my life,” said Mitchell Hasty, a Dalton Republican who works in excavation.
“I’m setting aside my doubts. I still believe in our country, but I’ve got serious concerns.”
“I think it was stolen.”
There is no substantiated evidence of widespread voter fraud. State and federal officials have debunked scores of conspiracy theories targeting Georgia’s election, and courts at every level have tossed out election challenges. Three separate tallies confirmed Biden’s narrow victory.
Still, Trump and his allies have promoted falsehoods that have taken root among many Republicans and were amplified by the president’s Dec. 5 rally in Valdosta, where he touted the two GOP senators but spent much of the event airing his election grievances.
“A major issue in this state is voter fraud,” Trump said from the stage, his first campaign rally since his election defeat. “It’s been a big issue for a long time, but never like this.”
He falsely told the crowd of thousands that their own votes in November had been wiped out by lying, cheating, and stealing. “Dead people, illegal immigrants, people who didn’t even exist” all voted, Trump said.
The attacks he’s leveled have only grown sharper since then, with many landing squarely on Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, whom he has called “clueless,” “a disaster” and worse.
On Wednesday, Trump escalated the GOP civil war by demanding that Kemp resign from office for refusing to intervene in the election. The president called his former ally “an obstructionist who refuses to admit that we won Georgia, BIG!”
The governor, who said he hasn’t been invited to Trump’s rally, didn’t directly criticize Trump. But he said he must “stay focused on the issues of the day in Georgia, not what someone’s tweeting.”
Trump’s firehose of accusations won’t succeed in overturning the election results. But interviews with more than a dozen voters at rallies around the state suggest they have undermined GOP voters’ faith in the state’s elections.
Shane Sparks, a Trump supporter in Milton, doubts the November results so thoroughly he’s still not convinced Biden will be inaugurated. “That’s not going to happen,” he said.
Standing with friends after an event for Loeffler in Woodstock, Dale Jackson said that she believes that Trump won “by a landslide” and that the election was “stolen.”
“I think that there was a lot of underhanded things going on. And not just from what I’ve seen on the TV. What I feel like I’ve experienced myself,” she said.
Despite her own doubts about the election, Jackson has already voted again for Loeffler and Perdue.
The GOP senators need as many Dale Jacksons as they can get. That’s because an analysis by the AJC shows that the most conservative portions of the state, including the Dalton area that Trump will visit Monday, are lagging in early voting compared to more Democratic regions of Georgia.
While early vote turnout for the runoff is down in every part of the state compared to the same point before the November election, early votes are down just 4% in Metro Atlanta’s Fulton County and 6% in the Democratic strongholds of Dekalb and Clayton counties.
But the gap increases to 11% in heavily Republican Northeast and Northwest Georgia and 12% in the Cobb/ Cherokee/ Bartow exurbs where the GOP now must overperform on election day to make up for the difference.
Election forecasters say it’s entirely possible they will succeed. In November, the early vote also favored Democrats, but Republicans showed up at a much higher rate on election day.
At stops around the state, the two GOP incumbents have tried to assure voters that casting a ballot this time around is both safe and essential.
“If you’re mad about what happened in November, stand with me and Kelly and fight,” Perdue told supporters in Greensboro. “If you haven’t voted, go vote. If you’re mad, fight.”
Laree Black and her mother, Patty Ward, both went to see Perdue and Loeffler in Greene County. And neither trusts the results of the last election.
“The problem is that the votes are being bought,” said Ward. “They’re being bought by the people that could afford to throw the money at Biden, because he’s not even going to be the person in a year. Harris is going to be in there. We all know the outcome of it.”
Black said she went to see Perdue and Loeffler to show their support because “of course we’re super scared.”
Scared of what?
“The fraud, our votes not counting.”
Kelli Slekton took her boys to see Ivanka Trump in Milton earlier in the month at another campaign event for Loeffler and Perdue.
She said she believes that Democrats cheated in the presidential election, and could “certainly” cheat again in the runoffs, but she’s planning to vote anyway.
“I think we need to fight for our country and not sit back and let them take over,” she said of the Democrats. “If we can’t have an honest election, what do we have?”
