Few were surprised when Donald Trump won the Georgia Republican primary Tuesday. What was startling was the depth and breadth of his victory, fueled by a record-shattering wave of voters who flocked to him from all corners of the state and all factions of the GOP.
Trump won evangelicals. He won the wealthy. He won men. He won women. He won the college-educated. In fact, the New York billionaire won nearly every category of Georgia voter with an appeal that cut across demographics, regardless of age, education level, gender, religious beliefs or degree of conservatism. In the process, Trump also won more votes than any other Republican candidate ever in a Georgia presidential primary.
Trump’s self-styled populist revolt, some say, is triggering a national seismic shift in politics not seen in more than a generation, exposing a huge rift between the Republican leadership and the electorate it represents.
“You’re talking about something we haven’t witnessed since Southern white voters abandoned the Democratic Party after the Civil Rights Act,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston.
That exodus was fueled by a sense of economic dislocation and also betrayal, Rottinghaus said. It’s a mood that seems to again be on the rise. Exit polls show that large numbers of Republicans who voted in the South on Tuesday felt “betrayed” by their party, with nearly six in 10 feeling that way in Georgia.
Nationally, the battle is playing out in gut-wrenching fashion as the GOP descended into open warfare in the aftermath of Trump’s Super Tuesday rout. In an extraordinary development, the Republican Party’s two immediate presidential nominees — Mitt Romney and John McCain — denounced their own party’s front-runner as a “fraud” and a “phony” whose election could prove “dangerous” for national security. Amid a new blitz of spending aimed at derailing Trump, there was mounting talk of a third-party bid should he win the party’s nomination.
But none of that bothered Ben Hendrick, a Cobb County Republican who has been involved in local politics for more than four decades.
“There isn’t anyone else in the race that can tie his own shoes much less be the president,” Hendrick said. “Trump is his own man. And he’s saying and he’s doing what we have to do.”
Hendrick has voted for exactly one Democrat since he turned 18: Rep. Larry McDonald, a conservative who represented Cobb County in the U.S. House in the 1970s and 1980s. And he’s been let down by what he said was a litany of weak-kneed Republicans, particularly the “big disappointment” in 2012, Romney. In Trump, he said, he sees a candidate who can shatter the mold.
“My bottom line is there’s nobody else out there that can do anything for our country. Nobody,” said Hendrick, an Austell retiree. “There is no limit to what I feel Donald Trump can do if he gets the chance. He’s exactly on target.”
The appeal of the outsider
Trump isn’t the first “outsider” candidate to do well in Georgia. A similar narrative helped another political novice and businessman, David Perdue, win a U.S. Senate seat in 2014.
But the emerging pattern has some in the political establishment wondering how it will ultimately upend politics in the Republican-led state. Georgia has relied in recent years on a fairly predictable diet of fiscal and social conservatism. Trump pulls some of those levers — notably illegal immigration — but he has also added populist themes into the mix, such as independence from the influence of political money.
It has much of Georgia’s political establishment puzzling over what the Trump phenomenon means to state politics. Consider the case of Gov. Nathan Deal, who was a nine-term congressman and veteran state lawmaker when he first claimed the Governor’s Mansion in 2010. Such a resume might not be as popular today.
“We are an independent crowd in the state of Georgia,” Deal said after Trump’s romp in the state. “He’s capitalized on a number of things, including dissatisfaction with what they perceive government is either doing or not doing. And to his credit, he’s been able to take advantage of those kinds of attitudes. We’ll see where it takes us in the long run.”
Public Service Commissioner Lauren “Bubba” McDonald, one of the few state politicians to publicly back Trump, said the billionaire’s victory was neither fleeting nor a fluke.
“For the first time, I think people are standing up and voicing their disappointments. They’re looking for a change,” McDonald said. “I don’t think it really matters who it is. They’re looking for a change of direction.”
The ripple effect could have its first consequences in Georgia on Monday, when qualifying begins for the hundreds of state legislative seats, 14 congressional districts and the U.S. Senate seat up for grabs in November. While no major Republican contender has signed on to run against U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson, who is seeking a third term, even reliable conservatives such as U.S. Rep. Doug Collins, R-Gainesville, are bracing for a challenge.
Few know the aftershock of that movement better than former U.S. Rep. Jack Kingston. He was the Republican establishment-backed candidate defeated by Perdue in 2014. And he sees parallels with the presidential contest unfolding now.
“Politics is unique in the sense that if you have experience it’s held against you. Everybody is enamored with the new shiny object,” said the Savannah Republican, who is backing U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz. “Fifteen years ago, you looked at somebody’s experience and what they actually achieved, how they acted. And now, it’s almost to the extent where experience isn’t part of the debate anymore.”
“Trump will owe no one a damn thing”
Trump’s resounding Super Tuesday victories in Georgia and six other states lent his campaign an air of inevitability even as he braces for a long delegate fight with Republican powers determined to chase him from the race. It also upset traditional notions of what drives GOP voters in Georgia.
They proved to be immune to media messaging. About 2.5 million voters cast ballots in November 2014, when more than $120 million was spent on ads and mailers ahead of an open U.S. Senate seat and a competitive governor’s race. This cycle, less than $10 million was spent in Georgia. Trump had no advertising campaign to speak of, and his rivals only launched ads in the final days of the race. And yet, more than 2 million people still showed up to vote.
Georgia Republicans also rejected fresh attacks from Cruz and Florida U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio casting Trump as a phony conservative. And they ignored the heap of endorsements from their elected officials for Trump’s rivals.
Instead, many voters found such traditional political trophies unattractive.
“I believe the politicians are being run — like puppets — at the hands of those lobbying,” said Karen McCall, a seventh-grade math teacher from Augusta.
“Trump will owe no one a damn thing,” she said. “He will shake the foundations and let the chips fall where they may.”
She’s not wearing blinders, though.
“Do I think Trump is perfect and without flaw? No, I am not living under a rock,” she said. “But I know that our government has become a mountain of corruption and people only looking out for their self-interest.”
But Will Kremer, a former chairman of the Georgia College Republicans and a one-time candidate for a state House seat, is one of a growing number of Republicans who say they can’t support Trump if he’s the nominee. Kremer said he’ll bypass the presidential vote altogether if Trump is on the ticket and vote for the GOP candidates in the down-ticket races.
“He makes racist remarks. He’s misogynistic. He’s crude. And I can’t personally support someone who picks and chooses what conservative principles he likes,” Kremer said. “He doesn’t like anyone who disagrees with him. The way he treats the media, the way he treats everyday Americans, is appalling. And by giving him my vote, it feels like I am condoning his actions.”
Still, Trump’s sometimes coarse style has not alienated many evangelical voters, who made up roughly seven in 10 Republican voters last week. Cruz staked his candidacy on winning over religious conservatives, who helped him prevail in the Iowa caucus a month ago. But Trump, a thrice-married casino developer, won the bulk of them in Georgia.
“People of faith are not single-issue voters,” Herman Cain, a former Republican presidential candidate turned conservative talk radio host, said the day after the primary in hopes of explaining the shift. “They are looking at the big picture.”
New voters turn out for billionaire
The question remains: Can Trump build the kind of voter coalition he will need to win in November?
To his most fervent supporters, that’s not a concern at all. Ronnie Myers of Augusta ticked off the reasons that Trump can win the White House in a matchup with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton or Vermont U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders.
“He’s a great businessman. He’s not a politician. He’s not bought and paid for by the super PACs. He’s the man,” Myers said. “And if he can’t do it, the others won’t be able to.”
The swell of voter attention in the campaign benefited Trump as well. Republican turnout was up more than one-third compared with the last wide-open presidential race in 2008. In the 32 counties that saw the highest increase in GOP turnout compared with 2008, Trump took a whopping 51.7 percent of the combined vote.
Among the political newcomers was Susan Williams, a 58-year-old who recently ventured to her first event.
“I’ve never been interested in any political arena before,” Williams said. “And it’s all due to Donald Trump. He’s so vocal. And he made it interesting enough for me to pay attention.”
Sean Spratt of Cartersville agreed. He grew up in New York, read Trump’s books, watched his TV show.
“When I saw him throw his name into the fray, I figured it was nothing more than a stunt. As time went on, though, he seemed very much into really wanting the job. That excited me,” he said.
“Clinton, Cruz, Rubio. It’s all the same crap, to be honest, and people understand there is not change coming with them,” he said. “Why not try an outsider? Why not try one with a huge body of work?”
The Democratic race followed established pattern
There was a Democratic race last week as well, but the results were more predictable. Clinton, as expected, defeated Sanders by a wide margin fueled by solid support from the state’s African-American community. Turnout, however, plummeted from 2008, dropping an average of 28.6 percent from that historic contest.
Georgia isn’t expected to be competitive in November, unless some sort of third-party bid scrambles the race — or unless a Trump nomination so infuriates Democrats and alienates mainstream Republicans that the race tightens.
Some influential Georgia Democrats are fast acknowledging they soon will have to counter the Trump phenomenon. He has confounded predictions in the conventional GOP race, though his say-anything combative style may become a weakness against Clinton should she win her party’s nomination.
“I expect Mr. Trump to be the nominee unless they engineer a way to take the nomination from him,” said Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, one of Clinton’s top supporters in Georgia.
“He’s either going to be the nominee or there are going to be a lot of people who voted for him that are going to have a lot of frustration,” Reed said, “because to avoid him being the nominee, they are going to have to engineer a way to prevent him from getting it.”
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