Political warfare at a fair? Nah, but parties do love a last-minute schmooze.

PERRY — The president of the United States keeled over face-first. Or at least a nearly 6-foot, full-color cutout of a grinning Donald Trump did the other day at the Georgia National Fair. But Jerry Mitchell, after bumping the cardboard commander in chief while posing for a photograph at a Republican Party booth, caught him midfall.

A reporter asked Mitchell, a fairgoer from Covington who had on a Mount Rushmore baseball cap, how the midterm elections might play out.

“The way things are going,” he said, “I mean, the price of everything is … I don’t know.”

Asked if he was a Trump fan, Mitchell, 75, a retired carpenter who restores 1950s-era Ford tractors, said. “Eh, sometimes. It depends on what he’s doing.”

A few feet away, his brother Larry Mitchell, 70, a former postal worker from DeKalb County, chimed in, “You don’t want a Democrat (in office) is all I can tell you.”

The Republican booth at Georgia’s largest fair stood across from a stand selling handmade goat-milk soap (five for $38) inside a covered vendor’s market. A Democratic booth stood halfway across the fairgrounds under a vinyl-roofed white tent across from a place char-grilling jumbo turkey legs ($21 each).

The Georgia National Fair ended Sunday. But for the 11 days it was open here, likely more than half a million visitors passed through its gates from all corners of the state, turning it into one giant town square.

Both political parties tried to corral potential voters here as the Nov. 3 elections quickly approach in this up-for-grabs swing state. The real-life Trump plans to campaign again for GOP candidates in nearby Macon on Saturday after he held a rally Friday in North Georgia.

Volunteers at the campaign booths here in largely rural Middle Georgia encouraged people to vote and doled out yard signs or vote-for-us buttons — while struggling to compete with a whir of live and stuffed animals, thrill rides and retailers pushing everything from hot tubs and tractors to jewelry and crocheted flowers.

In the midst of this midway, blue and red also tended to blur, even as Americans seem to be at each other’s throats online and on cable news. Civility reigned, mostly, despite some strong opinions.

There is a tradition at this sort of gathering. The term “midway” is derived from the partial name of a Chicago park. That Windy City expanse served as a go-between avenue at the 1893 World’s Fair, prior to which a dedication ceremony featured the first mass recitation of the recently penned Pledge of Allegiance: “ … one nation, indivisible.”

Staffing the GOP booth one day last week, Denise Housel and her husband Tom, retired schoolteachers who moved to Georgia from New Jersey, said passersby were by and large courteous, no matter their party affiliation.

“Most people that have come by are very pleasant,” Denise, 68, said before adding a plug for her party’s gubernatorial candidate. “And they’re all rooting for (Rick) Jackson.”

The booth, maintained by the Houston County Republican Party in the fair’s home county, also stocked signs for U.S. Senate candidate Mike Collins.

The placement of Trump’s likeness in front of the GOP booth comes at a time when Trump’s presence is seen by some as a tenuous proposition. A new poll showed that 55% of Georgians disapprove of his job performance.

Housel said the cardboard cutout of Trump was a draw for passersby. “They either want to buy it or have me take their photo,” she said.

The cutout of the 45th and 47th U.S. president vied for attention with a neighboring booth selling a mango-lemonade-mushroom drink that promised, according to a woman handing out samples, to promote brain health. “FREE Mushroom Shots,” a sign declared. “Feel Good NOW!”

When a passerby named Craig Wysong stopped by the GOP booth, he picked up a Rick Jackson drink koozie. Wysong, 54, who runs a sign company in nearby Warner Robins, said he tends to lean Republican at the ballot box. He said the economy is a leading issue for him.

“I don’t like how the news media, no offense,” he said to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter, “is portraying a lot of things. So I think if we really got down to the truth on things, we’re better off with the Republicans in office than we are the other side.”

About a five-minute walk south at the Democratic booth, which sat across from a stand selling those giant turkey legs, a battery of nearly two dozen strategically aimed box fans blasted a fog of cooked meat. The place billowed more smoke than a stump speech.

At the Democrats’ tent, T-shirts bearing the name of U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff, an incumbent seeking reelection, were the hottest commodity. Most had been given away halfway through the fair.

Fairgoer Kimberly Charles, 34, a contract specialist at Robins Air Force Base, picked up a button that read, “Win the whole DEM thing.” She sensed voters “want change” in this election. But as for the outcome tilting Democratic, Charles wasn’t so confident. “I know a lot of people are discouraged from the last time,” she said. “I just feel like a lot of people are not gonna go out and vote.”

The Democratic booth sat a couple of huts away from a boiled peanut outpost and next to a tent where a vendor sold necklaces — “Everything Must Go!!!” — and just down the row from a place where the hodgepodge of merchandise included cellphone covers and an assortment of flags and banners with macho-patriotic slogans. One read: “God Guns & Guts.”

Volunteer Frank Alexander, 66, of Kathleen, had on a “Keisha for Governor” T-shirt at the Democratic tent in a nod to Keisha Lance Bottoms. Alexander, who retired from the local air base as a systems engineer, said passersby are friendly enough. “We just get dirty looks sometimes,” he said.

A man from Macon named Greg Hubbard happened up. He cooled himself with a paper fan shaped like a dairy cow’s head. Hubbard, 62, works part-time delivering mattresses and sings jazz and country under the stage name “Unka Cat.” He came seeking a Bottoms sign and said, as a lifelong blue voter, he planned to vote Democrat “all the way down, from the top to the bottom.”

“To tell you the truth,” he said, “everybody’s catching hell. … Groceries are too high, gas is too high, medical’s too high, everything. We need help. We need somebody to make a change.”

Veteran Democratic booth staffer Susan Lemme, a retired librarian, said the preelection “atmosphere is calmer” this year than it was in 2024. “Much better,” Lemme, 64, said.