Biden-Trump battle kicks off in pivotal state Georgia with duelling events

The 2024 presidential election campaign picked up on Saturday where the 2020 contest left off. Or, more precisely, in a place where it never actually ended.

Georgia was so close four years ago that Republican Donald Trump finds himself indicted here for his push to “find 11,780 votes” and overturn Democrat Joe Biden’s victory. Now, fresh off their Super Tuesday domination to set up a near-certain rematch, the two rivals are holding duelling events in a state that both parties see as pivotal to winning in November.

“We’re a true battleground state now,” said US Rep. Nikema Williams, an Atlanta Democrat who doubles as state party chairwoman.

Once a Republican stronghold, Georgia is now so competitive that neither party can agree on how to describe today’s divide. A “52-48 state,” said Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, whose party controls state government. “We’re not blue, we’re not red,” Williams countered, but “periwinkle,” a claim she supports with Biden’s 2020 win and the two Democratic senators, Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, Georgia sent to Washington.

There is agreement, at least, that Biden and Trump each have a path to victory — and plenty of obstacles along the way.

“Biden’s numbers are in the tank for a lot of good reasons, and we can certainly talk about that. And so, it makes it where Trump absolutely can win the race,” Kemp said at a recent forum sponsored by Punchbowl News. “I also think he could lose the race. I think it’s going to be a lot tougher than people realise.”

A perilous balance for both parties

Biden’s margin was about a quarter of a percentage point in 2020. Warnock won his 2022 Senate runoff by 3 points. Kemp was elected in 2018 by 1.5 percentage points but expanded his 2022 reelection margin to 7.5 points, a blowout in a battleground state.

In each of those elections, Democrats held wide advantages in the core of metro Atlanta, where Biden will be Saturday. Democrats also performed well in Columbus and Savannah and a handful of rural, majority-Black counties. But Republicans dominated in other rural areas, small towns and the smallest cities — like Rome, where the former president will appear Saturday in the congressional district represented by archconservative firebrand Marjorie Taylor Greene.

At Trump’s rally, at a city in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, more than 3,000 people packed inside an event center Saturday to hear the former president speak. His campaign handed out signs featuring the image of Laken Riley, a Georgia nursing student whose death is now at the centre of the US immigration debate. A Venezuelan migrant who entered the US illegally is accused of killing her last month.

Candace Duvall, from Hampton, Georgia, wearing a white “Trump 2024,” T-shirt, a gold purse that said “Trump” and a pair of earrings that said “Never surrender” on one earring and Trump’s mugshot on the other, declared that her candidate is “going to save this country.”

She faulted Biden for fumbling the pronunciation of Riley’s name during his State of the Union speech Thursday.

“That happened right here in Georgia. That hits home for us. We know why that happened. We know why,” she said, adding that there were too many migrants coming into the country.

Duvall said she thinks Trump is winning over voters who didn’t like him before “because they see the difference now” with Biden.

“If somebody gives you sirloin and then they take it away and give you a hamburger, you’re going to want sirloin again,” she said.

Biden is visiting to receive the endorsement of Collective PAC, Latino Victory Fund and AAPI Victory Fund, a trio of political groups representing, respectively, Black, Latino, and Asian Americans and Pacific Island voters. The groups were announcing a $30 million commitment to mobilise voters on Biden’s behalf.

The trip follows first lady Jill Biden campaigning in the state, and Vice President Kamala Harris has visited Georgia many times since she and Biden were inaugurated.

The fast-growing, diversifying suburbs and exurbs of metro Atlanta, meanwhile, offer the most opportunity for swings, especially from GOP-leaning moderates disenchanted with Trump.

“This will be won or lost on the margins,” said Eric Tanenblatt, an Atlanta business leader and longtime Republican fundraising bundler who backed Nikki Haley’s GOP bid against Trump.

Democrats have a head start in building their campaign organisation and promise sustained, direct outreach to millions of Georgians — different from the pandemic-limited 2020 campaign and more like Warnock’s re-election bid.

“When you’re talking about slim margins like the one in 2020, organising has got to be at the heart of the campaign strategy,” said Jonae Wartel, Biden’s state director and a veteran of Warnock’s operation.

Still, Biden could see a slip in any part of his coalition for any number of reasons: inflation, the Israel-Hamas war, worries over a spike in migrants crossing the US-Mexico border and broad concerns about whether he’s up to the job at 81 years old.

Local issues

There are local matters to boot: Biden cannot afford to lose younger metro-Atlanta voters energised by their opposition to a police training facility being built in Atlanta and backed by the city’s Democratic leadership. And Republicans are intensifying their immigration attacks by highlighting Riley’s death.

Williams countered that Biden has a positive record to sell. She pointed to an infrastructure package that cleared Congress with bipartisan support and a strong overall economy with low unemployment, rising wages and stabilizing inflation. The economy is strong enough, she noted, to give Georgia an ample surplus that the Republican Kemp brags about.

“We have work to do between now and November to remind people what has happened,” Williams said.

Trump’s biggest challenge may be corralling centrist white voters who defected from the GOP in some recent elections. Democrats are eager to remind those voters, especially women, of Trump’s role in the Supreme Court decision to end a national right to abortion — a ruling with salience in Georgia because of a state ban on abortions at six weeks of gestation, before many women know they are pregnant.

The former president’s pending racketeering trial in Fulton County will keep the spotlight on Biden’s argument that his predecessor is a threat to democracy. And Trump’s rift with traditional Republicans, including Haley backers, remains on full display.

“Far be it from me to tell the former president what to do, but I think he would want someone like Nikki to be part of his team — and she could bring other people,” said Tanenblatt, the Haley bundler.

Tanenblatt said he sees no evidence that Trump or his advisers are engaged in conventional party unity efforts, like what Biden managed with Bernie Sanders and his progressive backers in 2020.

“Marjorie Taylor Greene, one of the former president’s major supporters, is out there before Nikki got out saying she should switch parties,” Tanenblatt said. “That’s not the kind of rhetoric you should be spewing.”

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