Trump’s return to Georgia could be a double-edged sword for the GOP

Why does President Donald Trump keep saying that voters should pretend like he’s on the ballot when they think about voting in 2026?

Maybe because of signs like the early voting numbers coming in for Georgia’s 14th Congressional District, where Trump will hold a rally Friday with GOP candidates.

While about 4% of registered voters, or 23,000 people, had cast their ballots there as of Wednesday night, that’s way down from the 7.3% of registered voters, or about 42,000 people, who had voted at the same point in the 2024 election, when Trump really was on the ballot.

Midterm elections rarely get the same amount of excitement from voters as presidential election years. But so far, the deep-red district definitely isn’t voting like Trump is on the ballot. That’s a problem this year for Republicans, since getting Trump voters back to the polls will be crucial in order for Republicans like Rick Jackson to become governor and U.S. Rep. Mike Collins to have a chance to defeat U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff in November.

GOP state Rep. Kasey Carpenter represents the Dalton area and owns a popular hotel and restaurant downtown.

He said Trump’s rally should help boost Republican turnout in northwest Georgia, but only to a point.

“I think it will inspire people to get up and get moving,” he said. “But if we could figure out a way to get gas under $3.50 per gallon, it would inspire them a lot more.”

Carpenter plans to vote for the entire Republican ticket, of course, but he said he has consistently been running into people he calls “zig-zaggers” — voters who are planning to zig and zag across their 2026 ballots, splitting their picks among Republicans and Democrats like Ossoff.

“There’s some frustration, even among Republicans, with Washington,” he said. “But I think people are happier with what we’ve been doing at the state level.”

The frustrations he hears about most are the Iran war, the cost of living, and especially in the heavily Latino city of Dalton, Trump’s immigration enforcement actions.

Shawn Harris, the Democratic nominee for Congress in the 14th District, said he hears the same frustrations, particularly from Republicans.

“Out on the campaign trail, I call it ”The Twilight Zone,’” he said. “Who would have ever thought that Shawn Harris and Marjorie Taylor Greene would agree that this Iran war is a war of choice, that we should have already released the Epstein files, and that we need to have better healthcare and make sure everybody have access to it?”

To Harris’ point, Greene has gone from representing the 14th district and being one of Trump’s biggest cheerleaders in Congress to resigning earlier this year following what she said were death threats against her children after she pushed to the Epstein files public.

Greene has now become one of Trump’s biggest critics, and Harris and Carpenter believe she represents a group of like-minded Republicans in the district.

“If Trump and Republicans had worked to lower cost of living, lowered costs of gas and diesel, stayed out of wars, and released the Epstein files without a fight, Republicans would have won for the next 4-6 years,” Greene wrote on social media the day before Trump came to town. “Currently there is not a single Republican Presidential hopeful that could win in 2028.”

Will another rally in MTG’s old stomping grounds, Trump’s third this year alone, make the results in November better or worse? It’s hard to say.

When Trump held an election eve rally in Dalton ahead of the 2021 Senate runoff contests, he lashed out at Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger for refusing to help him overturn the state’s 2020 election results.

“I’ll be here in about a year-and-a-half campaigning against you, governor,” Trump told Kemp, who wasn’t in attendance. “I guarantee that.”