The party that celebrated Donald Trump's victory in Georgia was held just off the loading dock of a warehouse in southeast Atlanta, a yellow nylon rope stretched across the drop-off for safety's sake.
The Spartan event was on private ground – a Trump preference that permits the campaign to screen out undesirables. For their personal comfort, visiting journalists were offered the use of a portable toilet outside. The offer was renegotiated after two well-tailored, female TV reporters threatened to inform their Twitter followers.
The few dozen celebrants able to make it to the wine-and-cold cuts event were an eclectic lot. There were veteran tea partyers, including one who had tried to topple the House speaker – and lost. One or two leather jackets. A few small business owners, plus a self-ordained street preacher who has worked the Marietta Square for decades.
Rather than its folding money, the Trump crowd on Tuesday was the discarded pocket change of the Georgia Republican party. Yet on this night, the pocket change won. Donald Trump gathered up nearly 500,000 of the 1.3 million Republican ballots cast.
As the anemic gathering indicated, Trump’s victory in Georgia wasn’t an organizational coup. This rebellion is a movement conducted outside normal grassroots parameters, primarily on your favorite cable news networks.
There were no robo-calls, no mailers, and few door-knockers. Just Trump and your TV set.
A dozen days ago, on the downtown Atlanta stage that would soon hold Trump, former Georgia GOP chair Sue Everhart promised “to work until five minutes to 7 on Election Day to get him elected.”
In the end, Everhart felt easy enough to spend the weekend in Puerto Rico, flying back in time to see the votes roll in on Tuesday — another sign that the Trump movement isn’t a grassroots effort as much as a communion of ticked-off people.
Yet there is something about Everhart that helps explain the Trump rebellion, at least in Georgia. One governor tried to dump her as chairman of the state GOP. He lost that fight. She blames the current governor for curtailing donations to the state party under her leadership.
“He cut off my money supply from the Capitol, but you could never lay it at his feet. But I found other money. I went back to all the people I used to loan money to,” said Everhart as we compared notes on Wednesday. “So we raised $25 million in six years.”
Everhart is a lifelong supporter of U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson, but slams Congress for its do-nothing ways – including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. “Donald Trump is a businessman. He negotiates. I don’t care if [Barack] Obama is the president, you ought to be able to do some negotiating with the president,” she said. “I know Obama can be crazy, but nobody likes to be hated. Not even Obama.”
Our phone conversation was cut short by an incoming call from Randy Evans, one of three Georgia members of the Republican National Committee. He was in Washington, and had just finished a three-and-a-half hour, state-by-state briefing on Tuesday’s election results.
Evans, an Atlanta attorney, is the longtime confidante of Newt Gingrich. So he has fomented a few rebellions himself. He also helped design the current GOP calendar.
It is not the math, but the Trump momentum that the billionaire’s rivals need to worry about, Evan said.
On March 15, winner-take-all contests begin on the Republican side of the presidential contest. But Evans doubts this will end the race. Only 10 states are all-or-nothing. Not enough to push any candidate past the 50 percent mark.
Instead, Evans suggests the nomination fight will extend at least into June, and perhaps into the Cleveland convention. Because we may have a new dynamic never seen in a GOP primary after a front-runner has emerged. A well-funded challenger.
“Normally, all of the money goes to the front-runner. Everyone wants to buy access and be on the bandwagon,” Evans said. “Here, if all the heavy donors say we don’t like the front-runner, and we’re going to bankroll someone else all the way to the end – that’s the dynamic that’s different here.”
This is why inertia could become so important, Evans said. Should Trump continue his winning streak, even if he gets only a plurality in future states, if his supporters see continued opposition as mere sabotage, then the outcry would be tremendous.
Whoever emerges as Trump’s remaining rival must have some legitimate undergirding — enough strength to demonstrate The Donald to be something other than inevitable. And that’s why the Trump momentum matters more than the math, Evans said.
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