Voter voices: 8 Black men paint starkly different pictures of Georgia’s midterm elections

C.J. Stewart is voting for Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms in Georgia’s governor’s race. But he’s not happy about it.

“I’m going to vote for Keisha specifically because she is a Black woman and specifically because she’s from the community,” said Stewart, co-founder of the L.E.A.D Center for Youth. “But the truth of the matter is, I don’t know if she cares about what I care about.”

Stewart is one of nearly a dozen Black men who spoke with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution about the midterms. While Black men still overwhelmingly vote Democratic, Republicans are gaining ground. Exit polls show Black men are twice as likely to vote Republican compared to Black women. In November 2024, 16% of Black men in Georgia voted for Republican Donald Trump over Democrat Kamala Harris who, if elected, would have been the nation’s first Black female president.

Black men make up a smaller part of the electorate. In 2024, 49% of registered Black men voted, compared with 63% for Black women and more than 70% for white voters. But in a toss-up governor’s race between Bottoms and Republican Rick Jackson, even small shifts could be enough to make a difference.

Why did Trump make gains with Black male voters in 2024? It might be because the Democratic Party has a messaging problem, community activist Scotty Smart said.

He thinks the party too often panders to the Black middle class but leaves lower income and less civically engaged Black communities behind.

“I feel like the Democratic Party has this uppity, bourgeoisie attitude towards people,” Smart said. “When you feel left behind, what Trump has allowed them to do is feel like they have a community.”

Voters Daniel Blackman and Shivvy Brooks said the party holds several misconceptions about the demographic.

“A lot of Black men, we are heads of our households. We are not statistically what everyone says. We have good paying jobs. We traveled out of the state, and we came home to rebuild,” Blackman said.

They say many Black men are socially conservative and some vote Republican because of their tax bracket. Trump speaks to those economic and social interests, they said, while Democrats simply expect the Black male vote.

Keith Tolbert voted for Trump in 2024 and rejects the framing of his voter identity around being a Black male. Instead, he says his conservative Christian values motivate his choices.

Tolbert, an investigator in the Rockdale County District Attorney’s office, says he will vote for Jackson in November. He wants a candidate that is staunchly pro-life and will reject transgender people in women’s sports.

“ (Gov. Kemp) kept us pretty stable through COVID (and) through the Biden years. So, I would like to see that continue and improve. I think we have the best chance of that with Jackson,” he said. “(Bottoms’) stint as mayor automatically disqualified her for the vote.”

Georgia State University senior Preston Paris says he is disillusioned with the Trump administration. But he remains a staunch conservative who will be casting his ballot for Jackson in the governor’s race. Much like Tolbert, Preston wants a candidate that is tough on crime, tax cuts, immigration and abortion.

“(Bottoms) presided in Atlanta during the COVID era where there was a sharp uptick in homicides,” he said. “Law and order wise, I don’t think she could be trusted — not on a city level, especially not on a state level.”

Even some Democratic voters, like Stewart Cornelius, say the party has lost touch with what Black men care about. There is too much focus on “fringe issues” that don’t resonate with Black male voters, he said.

“I can’t think of a message that I’ve received from a political candidate that felt like (they) were speaking to me since President Obama,” Cornelius said. “It’s more important that I can afford childcare for my son. Afford to be able to take my family on vacation once a year. The basic core tenets of middle-class America. No one’s really talking about that in a way that is tangible.”

Republicans are audacious and have consistent, core issues to campaign on, Cornelius said — he wants to see the same from the Democratic Party.

Even though Republicans rely on fearmongering to motivate their base, Smart added, it works. Democrats have not yet figured out what works for them, he said.

Despite the party’s problems, Stewart, Smart, Cornelius, Blackman, Brooks and Pastor Sammie J. Dow are still voting for the Democratic nominees at the top of the ticket: Bottoms and U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff. Partially as a vote against the Trump administration, which some labeled as racist and corrupt.

They see a need for radical change in Georgia and say the Democratic candidates align more closely with them on issues such as affordability, Medicaid expansion and education.

“Georgia has been run by a true Republican supermajority for over 25 years,” Smart said. “So, at what point do you see the writing on the wall that this is going in the wrong direction. At what point do you say this is bad leadership?”

Across nearly a dozen conversations with Black male voters, all are struggling to keep up with the cost of living.

“Our childcare is competing with our mortgage in terms of what we pay each month,” Dow said, who pays $752 a week in childcare for his two sons. “(And) I can’t tell you the last time I’ve been to the gas pump and spent less than $100.”

Jackson’s wealth and his financial stake in the healthcare industry is another sore spot for some Democratic voters, who note rural hospitals closing down across Georgia.

“It is not lost on me that he has made his fortune in an industry that is still bankrupting and not serving millions of Georgians — the healthcare industry,” Dow said. “You’re literally attempting to buy the Governor’s Mansion because you made money off of an industry that you don’t support expanding to make sure that it serves everyone in the state.”

But Paris is voting for Jackson precisely because of his promises to lower the cost of living. He says that homeownership is being pushed out of reach for his generation, and he thinks Jackson’s proposals to lower income taxes and property taxes will help lift that burden.

Democrats have spent much of the campaign criticizing Republican U.S. Senate nominee Mike Collins over his connection to people with antisemitic or white nationalist views. Collins son-in-law is a social media influencer who has posted neo-Nazi imagery along with white nationalist tropes.

“(Mike Collins) can’t even denounce white nationalism because he has it in his front yard. So, we literally have racism on the ballot,” Smart said. “We have people that are saying they want to be Trump 2.0 on (the Republican) side as well.”