Race appears tight in Georgia, so where are presidential candidates?

Indiana Gov. Mike Pence will hold two public events in Georgia on Monday, sandwiched around a high-dollar fundraiser he had previously scheduled in Atlanta to boost support for Donald Trump in the Peach State.

Trump’s running mate will headline a 2 p.m. rally at the National Fairgrounds in Perry followed by an 8 p.m. event at the Cobb-Marietta Coliseum.

In between, he will hold a fundraiser in metro Atlanta that’s expected to draw most of Georgia’s GOP establishment. The high-dollar fundraiser costs $2,700 to attend the reception (though general admission tickets were available at $250 a pop), $25,000 to be named a host and $100,000 to co-chair the event.

Several “co-chairs” are listed on the invite, including Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus, by far Georgia’s biggest political contributor this cycle, and state Sen. Burt Jones and his father, Bill, a petroleum kingpin.

The Republican nominee has swelled his campaign coffers thanks to a surge of small-dollar donors. But recently -released campaign data through June showed that nine out of 10 of Georgia’s biggest GOP donors had not given money to Trump or the super PACs boosting his campaign.

Pence is looking to shore up support for Trump in a state that hasn’t voted for a Democrat in the presidential contest since 1992. But an Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll this month showed he has some work to do introducing himself to Georgia conservatives.

The poll showed nearly three in four Georgia Republicans gave Trump a positive rating, but his numbers among the party faithful were sharply lower. He netted a 56 percent approval rating among Republicans (another third ducked the question) and a 37 percent approval rating with independents, a typically conservative bunch in Georgia.

Pence visit to Georgia to feature two rallies, one fundraiser

Indiana Gov. Mike Pence will hold two public events in Georgia on Monday, sandwiched around a high-dollar fundraiser he had previously scheduled in Atlanta to boost support for Donald Trump in the Peach State.

Trump’s running mate will headline a 2 p.m. rally at the National Fairgrounds in Perry followed by an 8 p.m. event at the Cobb-Marietta Coliseum.

In between, he will hold a fundraiser in metro Atlanta that’s expected to draw most of Georgia’s GOP establishment. The high-dollar fundraiser costs $2,700 to attend the reception (though general admission tickets were available at $250 a pop), $25,000 to be named a host and $100,000 to co-chair the event.

Several “co-chairs” are listed on the invite, including Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus, by far Georgia’s biggest political contributor this cycle, and state Sen. Burt Jones and his father, Bill, a petroleum kingpin.

The Republican nominee has swelled his campaign coffers thanks to a surge of small-dollar donors. But recently -released campaign data through June showed that nine out of 10 of Georgia’s biggest GOP donors had not given money to Trump or the super PACs boosting his campaign.

Pence is looking to shore up support for Trump in a state that hasn’t voted for a Democrat in the presidential contest since 1992. But an Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll this month showed he has some work to do introducing himself to Georgia conservatives.

The poll showed nearly three in four Georgia Republicans gave Trump a positive rating, but his numbers among the party faithful were sharply lower. He netted a 56 percent approval rating among Republicans (another third ducked the question) and a 37 percent approval rating with independents, a typically conservative bunch in Georgia.

If Georgia is so competitive, then why haven’t the presidential candidates visited here in months?

That’s the question voters and analysts keep asking as Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton try to shore up support in battleground states and visit others hardly on the electoral map.

Sure, a steady stream of surrogates have traipsed to Atlanta to raise cash and gladhand with voters, such as Bill Clinton on his trip to Manuel's Tavern last week and Republican vice presidential candidate Mike Pence, who will be here Monday.

But Trump hasn’t visited Georgia since June and has bewildered even some of his most ardent supporters with recent rallies in deep-red Texas and Mississippi and deep-blue Connecticut. Hillary Clinton hasn’t stumped in Georgia since a February visit days ahead of Georgia’s presidential primary.

The candidate dry spell comes as a string of polls show a tightening presidential race in Georgia, which hasn't voted for a Democrat since Bill Clinton's 1992 victory. An Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll this month showed Hillary Clinton had a slight edge over Trump here, and several other surveys have the race deadlocked.

Both campaigns have also beefed up their staffs here and hired veteran advisers to shepherd their Georgia efforts, and Democrats are in a tizzy at Clinton's decision to pump a six-figure investment into the state party for field operatives and get-out-the-vote efforts.

Many Republicans scoff at talk that Georgia, which gave Mitt Romney an 8-point victory in 2012, could flip blue so soon. And even some Democrats privately say they worry a Clinton victory in Georgia is a long shot, though they hope the surge of attention can help their electoral efforts in 2018 and beyond.

A head-scratching schedule

The careful decision about which states a candidate visits in the final stretch of a campaign can be just as crucial as advertising buys and policy platforms, and Trump’s campaign stops in states not pivotal to Election Day has led to an outpouring of angst among Republican strategists.

He held rallies last week in Austin, Texas, and Jackson, Miss. — two reliably red states — after a head-scratching visit to Connecticut, which hasn’t voted for a Republican presidential candidate since 1988. Next up is a visit Tuesday to Washington state, which is nearly a lock for Clinton. And a chorus of national Republicans said his time would be better spent down south.

Austin Barbour, a Mississippi-based strategist, questioned Trump's "confusing" decision not to spend more time in Georgia and North Carolina. And Stuart Stevens, Romney's former top strategist, said the candidate is squandering an opportunity to shore up support in the Peach State.

“Trump should be in Georgia, not Wisconsin,” he wrote during Trump’s recent visit to West Bend, Wisc. “He’s not going to win Wisconsin,” Stevens added, saying Trump is more likely to motivate frustrated Democrats there than inspire Republicans.

Clinton, meanwhile, has spent much of the past few weeks crisscrossing a familiar set of battleground states, with recent stops in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania. But as Trump plunged in the polls in August, she’s held few public events along with high-dollar fundraisers in Martha’s Vineyard and the Hollywood Hills.

Political strategists expect both candidates to shift gears after Labor Day, which typically signals the final leg of the presidential race.

“The candidates are only stretching outside the starting blocks now, but they will both be doing more public events once the post-Labor Day spring commences,” said Chip Lake, a GOP operative in Georgia. “There are more states potentially in play this year, but we are not alone.”

The waiting game?

And Democrats seem to be watching and waiting before deciding whether to play up Georgia.

“Trump being in the race has completely changed the map for what could be a winnable state. People don’t know what he’ll say next, so everything is on the table,” said Rebecca Walldorff, an Atlanta-based Democratic strategist. “And Trump, being an unconventional Republican, is making it harder to determine what’s in play and what’s not.”

While Georgia’s 16 electoral votes seem crucial to Trump’s path to victory, any Clinton visit would seem a calculated move — either to signal that she believes Georgia is as close as the polls suggest or to entice Trump’s campaign to pour money into defending a state that is typically in the GOP column.

“They appear to be making a very limited commitment — maybe only a ‘head fake’ at this point,” Emory University political scientist Alan Abramowitz said, adding: “The fact is, Clinton doesn’t need Georgia. Georgia would just be icing on the cake, so they’re probably going to focus much more on the usual suspects in the South — Florida, Virginia and North Carolina.”

Even as the candidates have bypassed Georgia, their surrogates have stepped up their fundraising trips. Pence, Trump’s running mate, is set to headline two rallies in Georgia along with a big-ticket fundraiser he’s holding in metro Atlanta that costs donors $100,000 to co-chair.

And Bill Clinton swung through Atlanta last week to raise cash for his wife’s campaign. It cost donors $10,000 a pop for a picture with him at the late-night fundraiser, though a few dozen diners at Manuel’s Tavern got their selfies for free when Clinton breezed through for a visit.

“We were just here for lunch and we came in and the next thing you know the Secret Service is showing up,” said Laurean Spencer, still gushing over the photo with the former president after he had left the building. “He walks in and he’s so nice and so personable.”

Still, Spencer added, it would be nice if the candidate herself was the one making the surprise visit.

“We are definitely with her.”