Trump coming to Atlanta on Wednesday to cultivate donors, voters

AJC on the trail

From the beginnings of this year’s presidential campaign in Iowa and New Hampshire, through the debates, the “SEC primary” and other contests, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has been there providing in-depth coverage with a special emphasis on the South. To follow the campaign, go to myAJC.com and ajc.com.

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump will briefly swing through Atlanta on Wednesday, making two stops aimed at boosting his profile in the state, particularly among wealthy GOP donors, as he sets his sights on defeating Democrat Hillary Clinton in the general election.

The billionaire’s Georgia sojourn begins with a closed-door breakfast fundraiser at the Atlanta estate of businessman and philanthropist Charlie Loudermilk. The event is co-hosted by Gov. Nathan Deal and U.S. Sen. David Perdue, although the latter said he could not attend the event in person due to Senate business related to Georgia’s long-running water wars.

From there, Trump will hold the fourth Georgia rally of his presidential campaign — the first since GOP voters in the state handed him a 14-point victory in the March 1 primary — at the nearly 4,700-seat Fox Theatre.

Atlanta’s status as a regional business hub home to more than a dozen Fortune 500 companies has long made the city a popular fundraising destination for presidential candidates.

“Candidates fly into Atlanta, do a motorcade to a downtown hotel, collect the money, go back, fly out and they may be here less than a couple of hours,” said Charles Bullock, a political science professor at the University of Georgia.

Candidates rarely, however, spend much of their time or money campaigning in Georgia due to the state’s solid red political credentials. Georgia has not selected a Democrat for president since 1992.

“Democrats figure they aren’t going to carry the state, and Republicans figure Democrats aren’t going to push, so they don’t campaign in the state either,” Bullock said.

Trump spurned big donors during his primary run in favor of self-funding, but he has some ground to cover as he seeks to compete with Clinton's well-cultivated fundraising network that has been built over several decades in politics. Some estimates for the overall price tag of the 2016 presidential race have topped $5 billion.

“There’s a significant amount of resources that have historically gone to Republican nominees from the state,” said Eric Tanenblatt, a veteran GOP fundraiser and strategist in Georgia who has had roles in several presidential campaigns. Trump, Tanenblatt said, is “not well-known among the donor community.”

“Typically, donors like to meet their candidates or get to know their candidates,” Tanenblatt said, “and so I think his efforts of being down here will help if he wants to raise money from Georgians.”

The Wednesday morning fundraiser for the Trump Victory Fund, the joint effort between the billionaire’s campaign and the Republican Party, seeks to build up that network. The minimum price for donors to hear Trump’s brief speech at the event is $2,700. For those who donate or raise at least $25,000 for the candidate, they “will spend time in a separate room getting to know and be known by Mr. Trump.”

The deal Trump struck with the Republican National Committee allows wealthy donors to give almost $450,000 to finance the campaign and voter turnout initiatives through the Victory Fund. Campaign finance laws make it exceedingly difficult to track that money.

Individuals giving directly to Trump’s presidential campaign are much more limited in what they can donate — $5,400, divided equally between the primary and the general election. Through the end of April, the Trump campaign said it had collected more than $106,000 from Georgians, according to federal filings.

Tanenblatt, who has ties to the Bush family and previously backed Jeb Bush earlier in the election cycle, said he did not think Trump’s past remarks spurning special political interests or large-scale presidential fundraising would hurt his ability to raise money in Georgia, especially given what’s at stake in the election for both parties. But he said Trump will still need to work to secure that money.

“I think that there shouldn’t be any expectation that donors are just going to open up their checkbooks because he’s come down here,” he said. “I think because of the fact that many of them don’t know him and they just know what they see and hear in the news media, there is some reluctance before they open up their checkbooks, so I think that it’s important that he get in front of people as much as he can to try and win them over.”

As for the Wednesday rally, Bullock said he does not see the timing as a sign of trouble for the campaign.

“If he was holding a rally in Georgia in October, much closer to the election … then yeah, he’s worried,” Bullock said. “Doing it in June, no. I would not interpret that as meaning he thinks the state is going to slip away. My guess is that he’s trying to get voters who maybe haven’t been that active, aren’t that regular voters, get them fired up so that they talk to their friends and turn out.”

Despite an often ugly primary race that pitted Trump supporters against backers of Texas U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, Georgia Republicans have begun coalescing behind the billionaire in recent weeks.

Democrats in the state, though, are betting that divisions over Trump and a strong voter turnout effort on their part, particularly among minority communities, can help turn the state blue this election cycle.