SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Vice President Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, took a bus tour this week through coastal Georgia. The Democratic Party sees this as a crucial battleground once again for November. Course, it's also a must-win state for Donald Trump, even as Republican infighting has plagued the party since Trump's narrow loss there in 2020. NPR's Stephen Fowler is our man in Georgia. Stephen, thanks so much for being with us.
STEPHEN FOWLER, BYLINE: Always a pleasure.
SIMON: Donald Trump won Georgia decisively in 2016, lost by under 12,000 votes in 2020. How would he win there this November?
FOWLER: Well, getting more votes than Kamala Harris - but on a more serious note, here's a quick Georgia history lesson for you. For more than two decades, Republicans have dominated Georgia's politics at every level. They've enacted pro-business policies that have attracted tons of new residents and industries and voters that don't usually vote for Republicans - things like the film industry, the tech industry.
So as Georgia has purpled, Scott, Republicans have been successful in recent years by minimizing culture war issues and appealing to more than just their conservative base. That's the type of message Trump needs to convey, but he's done the opposite of that. In fact, he spent most of the last four years attacking popular Republican governor Brian Kemp for not overturning the 2020 election. Case in point, here's Trump at an Atlanta rally earlier this month.
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DONALD TRUMP: He's a bad guy. He's a disloyal guy, and he's a very average governor. Little Brian, little Brian Kemp - bad guy.
SIMON: But they've made up, right?
FOWLER: Well, yes. I mean, there's a few things that happened. Namely, Kamala Harris happened, and the new Democratic enthusiasm has made Georgia a competitive state once more. There's been lots of behind-the-scenes wrangling, culminating in Kemp doing an interview on Fox News with Sean Hannity that made its way in front of Donald Trump.
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BRIAN KEMP: I've been saying consistently for a long time we cannot afford another four years of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, and I think, you know, Kamala Harris and...
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KEMP: ...Tim Walz would be even worse.
FOWLER: Kemp went on to say, it's imperative that Trump gets back into the White House and that the Republican Party keeps the House and flips the Senate. Republicans in Georgia know the stakes especially well, Scott. The 2020 election also saw runoffs that flipped both Senate seats to Democrats. And while Kemp romped in the midterms, a Trump-y (ph) Senate candidate lost in a runoff to Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock, once again cementing Democratic control of the chamber because of Georgia. I mean, Scott, Georgia is truly a state that is split both demographically and ideologically along a knife's edge and shows it has an electorate that's willing to vote for a Republican in Brian Kemp and a Democrat in Raphael Warnock.
SIMON: What is the Trump campaign plan? Can you tell?
FOWLER: Well, they have this Trump Force 47 strategy, and Georgia's kind of ground zero for that. It uses volunteers at the local level to activate friends and neighbors with targeted messaging and reminding them to get out the vote. This is especially important after some of those people stayed home in previous elections because of Trump's false fraud claims.
The campaign says they've held hundreds of events and signed up thousands of volunteers in just the last few weeks. And Ohio Senator JD Vance, Trump's VP pick, was just campaigning in Georgia, showing that there's an army of surrogates both inside and outside the state that can more effectively reach beyond the base and expand that tent. Ultimately, Republicans hope the specter of four more years of Democratic policies is also enough of a motivator for people to show up and vote.
SIMON: NPR's Stephen Fowler in Atlanta. Thanks so much.
FOWLER: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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