Trump’s Georgia gamble: Can he help Republicans more than he hurts?

DALTON — Rick Jackson didn’t mention Donald Trump’s name once during his opening speech at the president’s rally on Friday. He offered a carefully measured tribute later when Trump called him back to the stage.

Meanwhile, U.S. Rep. Mike Collins couldn’t stop talking about the president. The Republican U.S. Senate nominee pledged to have Trump’s back in Washington and framed his campaign against Democratic incumbent Jon Ossoff as a referendum on Trump’s administration.

The contrasting approaches were impossible to miss as Trump returned to Georgia to rally Republicans less than three weeks before Election Day.

Jackson, the Republican nominee for governor, is trying to win over Trump loyalists without alienating the swing voters who could decide his race.

Collins, waging an uphill challenge against Ossoff, is betting that embracing Trump at every turn can help him overcome a polling and fundraising deficit that has GOP leaders openly souring on his chances.

Their split-screen approach crystallized a defining question of the midterm elections: Will Trump help Republican candidates more than he hurts them?

For Georgia Republicans, it’s an all-too familiar problem. For the last decade, they’ve wrestled with the duality of the mercurial president.

He is the party’s most powerful political draw, capable of energizing MAGA voters who might otherwise skip a midterm election without his name on the ballot. But he’s also toxic to many independent voters who have helped decide Georgia’s last four statewide elections.

And by embracing Trump in the final stretch of the campaign, GOP candidates are also giving Democrats an indelible image of them standing shoulder-to-shoulder with a president whose sagging approval ratings and unpopular tariffs have become a political liability.

The MAGA loyalists who flocked to Dalton on Friday brushed aside those concerns, confident that Trump’s call-to-action would give Republicans a jolt.

“Every time you have Donald Trump in town it gets people excited,” said Melanie Collier, a longtime GOP activist who was among the first to arrive in Dalton. “I’m very optimistic. Why wouldn’t I be?”

And so did Collins.

“Jon Ossoff hates Trump more than he loves Georgia,” Collins told the cheering crowd.

High stakes

For Jackson, the stakes are particularly high.

Since winning the GOP nomination, the billionaire businessman has worked to cast himself as an independent-minded maverick willing to “stand up” to Washington in the mold of Republican Gov. Brian Kemp.

Jackson needs Trump’s loyalists to turn out in force to defeat Democratic nominee Keisha Lance Bottoms. But he also needs to win over the swing voters who helped Kemp cruise to reelection in 2022 even as Trump-backed candidates struggled.

Julianna McConnell, a Suwanee activist who arrived hours before Trump, said Jackson is walking a tightrope trying to embrace the styles of both Trump and Kemp. But she called it the “right way to win.”

“He’s tied himself to the governor,” she said. ”But he also can’t ignore the president of the United States when he’s in Georgia. The MAGA base is everything.”

Jackson’s decision to minimize Trump was striking given his political origin story. After his surprise February campaign launch, he vowed early and often to be Trump’s “favorite governor.”

But since securing the nomination, Jackson has increasingly emphasized his independence and his ties to Kemp, who skipped Friday’s rally.

When Jackson joined Trump onstage, he kept his praise narrowly focused on foster care, an issue he knows firsthand from his own childhood.

“There’s never been a president who has done more for foster children that are abused and neglected than this man right here.”

Democrats are determined to make sure voters don’t forget Jackson’s Trump connection.

At campaign stops around the state, they blame his administration for rising costs, the war with Iran and policies they say have made life harder for Georgians.

Bottoms launched a 30-second ad coinciding with Trump’s visit that features clips of Jackson praising Trump and asks: “Who will Rick Jackson put first, Trump or Georgia?”

Trump, meanwhile, did little to downplay his role in Georgia’s races.

In a winding speech filled with boasts about his administration’s accomplishments and attacks on Democrats, the president mocked Ossoff as “Pee-wee Herman” and took credit for helping defeat him in a 2017 special U.S. House election.

“Ossoff was leading by a lot and they called me in to help,” Trump said of the 2017 race, which Ossoff lost to Republican Karen Handel.

Trump also heaped praise on Collins and Jackson, complimenting their appearances and describing Collins as straight out of “central casting.”

“You’re going to have one of the best senators, one of the most respected people in Washington,” Trump said of Collins.

A political tightrope

Trump’s return to Dalton offered a striking contrast with his last rally here in January 2021.

That one was held on the eve of two pivotal U.S. Senate runoffs and just a day after the disclosure of his extraordinary demand that Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger “find” enough votes to reverse his election defeat.

Trump was ostensibly there to help then Republican U.S. Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue. But he spent much of his speech berating Kemp and Raffensperger for refusing to help him overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results — and praising efforts to challenge Joe Biden’s victory.

“I’ll be here in about a year and a half campaigning against your governor, I guarantee you that,” Trump told the cheering crowd, previewing his failed 2022 attempt to dislodge Kemp and other top GOP officials.

The next day, Loeffler and Perdue lost to Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, handing Democrats control of the U.S. Senate.

Nearly six years later, the political dynamics have shifted.

Trump returned to Dalton to help elect a Republican nominee for governor who has made Kemp’s legacy a centerpiece of his campaign. And Ossoff, who defeated Perdue in that 2021 runoff, is the heavy favorite to defeat Collins.

Kemp, meanwhile, was again a notable absence. Although he’s since made peace with the president after years of feuds, he is far from close to him.

Other prominent Republicans also stayed away. But plenty of down-ticket candidates were eager to be seen alongside Trump, showcasing their different calculations.

Republican nominees Tim Fleming and Brian Strickland, who are running for secretary of state and attorney general, were both featured speakers. So was Insurance Commissioner John King, a former target of Trump’s wrath now seeking another term.

And then there was state Sen. Greg Dolezal, whose appearance was something of a surprise. The Republican nominee for lieutenant governor had declined to say whether he would attend, even after Democratic nominee Josh McLaurin publicly challenged him to stay away.