[ad_1]
rome, georgia
CNN
—
President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump will hold dueling events in Georgia on Saturday as a rematch for the White House moves from an inevitable possibility to an inevitable reality.
Biden will continue his post-State of the Union tour and head to the Atlanta area as he embarks on a month-long campaign to get his message directly to voters in battleground states. At about the same time, President Trump will hold a rally in the northwestern part of the state to ramp up his own political schedule in the run-up to his general election.
Their head-to-head showdown, separated by about 90 miles of Georgia highway, could provide an early window into competing strategies to court voters less enthusiastic about a Biden-Trump rematch. . Few battleground states are paying more attention to how voters are responding to outreach than Georgia, which Biden won by fewer than 12,000 votes four years ago, and the Peach State will be in the Peach State over the next eight months. It will be a perfect place to begin the long battle.
“Georgia has been ground zero for national politics since 2018,” said Fred Hicks, a Georgia-based Democratic strategist. “It’s fitting that this is the first major stop after the State of the Union as the president resumes his campaign and Donald Trump looks to regain momentum.”
The two arrive in Georgia at a critical turning point in the presidential election. Saturday’s rally came as Trump nearly won the Super Tuesday nomination race and forced former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley to finally end her extensive presidential campaign, making her the party’s leading candidate. This will be the first gathering since its emergence. His nomination could take another symbolic step toward formalization on Tuesday, when Georgia and three other states award delegates.
Meanwhile, Biden’s impassioned State of the Union address signaled an unmistakable shift in direction for the political challenges ahead. The nearly 70-minute speech did not mention Trump by name but included multiple references to “my predecessor” and was an extraordinary move to set the stakes for the November election. made an effort.
This is the second time in recent weeks that the two have appeared on screen together. Last month, Biden and Trump visited the U.S.-Mexico border on the same day.
Saturday was the second in a series of trips planned this month, with Biden’s team aiming to amplify the president’s State of the Union message, strengthen infrastructure and launch a so-called “I’m in it” campaign. There is. Biden visited middle schools in the Philadelphia area on Friday.
Campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez told reporters Friday that the team will “dramatically expand our volunteer efforts, increase our battlefield staff, launch coalition groups, and invest in new paid media campaigns.” He said he is working on a new initiative.
Biden and Harris plan to visit all battleground states in the coming weeks, the campaign said. Biden will visit New Hampshire, Wisconsin and Michigan next week.
“Through our actions this month, we will actively mobilize a diverse Biden-Harris coalition,” Rodriguez said.
That includes a trip Saturday to Georgia, which has proven to be a key state for Democrats to win the White House and Senate in the past two cycles.
But early polls in the state show Trump in the lead. Also, unlike in 2020, the U.S. Senate race will not pass through Georgia, leaving it up to the Biden campaign to mobilize voters without the help of key down-ballot candidates.
“If there’s no statewide election and there’s nothing noteworthy on the ballots, turnout will be low,” said Andrew Heaton, a Democratic strategist who worked for Georgia Democratic Sen. It’s going to be difficult.”
Democratic strategists say it’s black men among the winning coalition that Biden needs to address.
Hicks emphasized that many of Biden’s policies, such as lowering health care costs and cracking down on price gouging, have little recognition among Black voters.
“They live in a D.C. bubble,” Hicks said. “And they think their policies are known and understood and their impact extends outside the D.C. bubble, when in fact they don’t. You’ll have to tell people what you did.”
This week, MAGA Inc., a Trump-aligned super PAC, launched a three-week radio advertising campaign targeting black voters in battleground states, including Georgia, where it had the most purchases.
The Trump campaign said it sees an opportunity with Black voters who feel disenfranchised or left behind by Democrats and is working on strategies to reach them. Some Republicans were optimistic after polls in battleground states last fall showed Trump making inroads with black voters.
But there are also headwinds for Trump in Georgia, many of which are of his own making.
After becoming the first Republican presidential candidate to lose Georgia in 24 years, Trump baselessly accused Republican leaders across the state of covering up widespread voter fraud. Two months after the 2020 election, President Trump pressured Georgia election officials to “find” the votes needed to overturn the election results in a phone call with Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. I applied it.
Immediately after Biden’s loss, the state’s two incumbent Republican senators, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, lost runoff elections to Jon Ossoff and Warnock, respectively, and became Democrats at the beginning of Biden’s presidency. He narrowly lost the Senate majority. Many within the party blamed President Trump’s election denialism and criticism of mail-in voting for the drop in turnout in the runoff elections.
President Trump blamed his 2020 loss on Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and Raffensperger, who refused to cooperate with Trump in overturning the state’s election. Mr. Trump personally recruited candidates to run against both men in the 2022 primary, but Mr. Kemp and Mr. Raffensperger prevailed and won reelection.
Trump has been charged with trying to interfere in Georgia’s 2020 election, making the state one of several legal battles he faces during his presidential bid. President Trump has regularly attacked Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who brought the charges against him. The judge is expected to decide in the coming weeks whether to disqualify Willis because of his past relationship with the special counsel in charge of Trump’s case.
A Republican strategist in the state said President Trump’s antics in the state have turned many swing voters against the former president. As a result, in 2022, a significant number of conservative-leaning independents and moderates will split their votes, voting for Kemp in the governor’s race but voting for Warnock in the Senate race.
“This poll mirage is too dangerous to count in our favor,” the strategist said. The strategist requested anonymity so he could not speak freely about the Trump campaign there. “Kemp and Warnock voters won’t even have a conversation about Trump. They can’t even start a conversation. They don’t like him.”
Notably, Trump and Kemp have not reconciled, although Kemp said last year that he would vote for the former president over Biden. Kemp was not invited to Trump’s rally in the state.
Even Republicans rooting for Trump’s success are unsure whether he can make the necessary adjustments to win Georgia.
“It’s up to Trump. I want to see a benevolent winner,” said Jules Windham, local Republican Party chair in Macon County, Middle Georgia. “I’d like to see someone who reaches out to the other side, but that’s not always his MO. But if that happens, some voters will be turned off by his character. But I don’t dislike his policies.”
A senior adviser told CNN that his team plans to ramp up campaign efforts in Georgia in the coming weeks. But his message has already shifted into the general election, particularly capturing public anxiety over the flow of migrants across the U.S.-Mexico border.
That includes regular mentions at campaign rallies in recent weeks of Laken Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student who was allegedly killed by an illegal immigrant after jogging on the University of Georgia campus. President Trump told the audience that he had spoken to Riley’s parents and linked her death to Biden’s immigration policies.
Biden’s visit became a political flashpoint during this week’s State of the Union address, making her death even closer. Several Republican members of Congress have worn pins with her name on them, she has been the subject of jeers from Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, and there has been a variety of exchanges between her and Biden during her speech. An exchange ensued.
Picking up a pin handed to him by Greene as he entered the House of Representatives, Biden acknowledged the death of “Lincoln Riley, an innocent young woman murdered by an illegal alien,” but also misspelled her name. , used the term to refer to illegal immigrants. Many Democrats consider it a derogatory term.
Biden went on to say, “My heart goes out to her parents.” “I myself have experienced the loss of a child, so I completely understand.”
In particular, Trump’s rally will be held in Rome, the center of Greene’s Georgia campaign, and Greene is also expected to attend. Another Georgia Republican, Rep. Mike Collins, also plans to attend. Riley was killed in the Collins area, and Riley invited her parents to the State of the Union address.
In a sign that the tragedy could become even more politicized in the coming months, Greene said Thursday that during a meeting with Biden, he told her, “You are responsible for her murder.”
[ad_2]
Source link
