SANDERSVILLE — Most Washington County residents are just beginning to pay attention to the race between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump.
A few Trump campaign signs can be seen scattered around Sandersville, but it’s not a huge concern just yet.
Perhaps that’s not surprising. Lifelong residents describe Washington County as a moderate place, with voters leaning slightly left or right of center. That lean often falls along racial lines, with Black voters supporting Democrats and many white voters backing Republicans, several county residents said.
But interest is picking up, with the Republican National Convention in the rearview mirror and the Democratic National Convention coming up later this month.
“You can’t help but be interested in politics in this environment,” Dr. William Rawlings Jr., a retired physician, said a few days after the GOP convention concluded in Milwaukee. “I don’t go out and whoop and holler about it. I do vote, and I do have my opinions. And if you had to say I was somewhere, I would probably be more conservative.”
Rawlings, who can trace both sides of his family’s Washington County roots back to the late 1790s, said it was rare that politics came up in his house growing up, but it was clear that family members had their opinions.
Rawlings, 76, and his five siblings are well-known throughout the area. He, his father and both of his grandfathers were physicians. In retirement, Rawlings has focused on writing. He’s written 14 books since 2003. His brothers and sisters are academics, physicians, psychiatrists and judges. Rawlings is the eldest brother of Atlanta lobbyist Tom Rawlings, who was a juvenile court judge before serving for a time as director of the Georgia Division of Family and Children Services.
“I think everybody held their beliefs, and I think they were somewhat right of center,” Rawlings said. However, he said his father was “definitely liberal in many of his views.”
Rawlings’ father, Dr. William Rawlings Sr., served as a member of the Washington County school board in the 1960s and 1970s and oversaw the county’s desegregation efforts. He died in 2004.
“He was the one that, despite a large amount of local flak, guided things in the right direction,” Rawlings said. “And I think his comment was, ‘We have to do the right thing.’ ”
Despite its laid-back atmosphere, Washington County is one of the most closely divided counties in one of the most closely divided states in the nation.
Voters in Washington County have selected the Democratic candidate in five of the past six presidential elections. In 2004, the county’s voters supported Republican President George W. Bush’s reelection. In 2020, Joe Biden got 50.1% of the county’s vote. Trump secured 49.3%.
Rawlings said he doesn’t plan to support Harris in the presidential race, saying he isn’t happy with the direction of the Biden administration. He said the country won’t have enough time to vet Harris before the November election. Plus, Rawlings said, he doesn’t know whether any of her policy positions are different from Biden’s.
“I think she was chosen (as Biden’s running mate) because of her sex and her race, No. 1, because he wanted her to appeal (to those demographics). I don’t think he chose her on her merits,” Rawlings said. “I think she has a history of doing some things, but we really don’t know where she stands on a lot of issues other than the fact that she has been repeating the administration lines, which is fine.”
Rawlings said he doesn’t have a bad opinion of Harris “except for that cackling laugh she has.”
“She seems like a nice person, but she doesn’t have the gravitas — if I can use that word — that one would expect from a presidential candidate,” he said.
He has the same problem with Trump.
“I don’t think we have a decent candidate out of them all,” he said. “I think Biden won, not because people voted for Biden, but they voted against Trump.”
On Tuesday when Harris announced Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate, Rawlings said he still wasn’t impressed by the Democratic ticket.
“I really don’t know him,” he said. “And I think people around here don’t know him either. He is very much an unknown quantity as Kamala Harris continues to be an unknown quantity. I don’t think that we really have a good feel for either of them.”
Even if his mind is made up, Rawlings said, Middle Georgia isn’t a part of the state that should be written off.
“There’s some misapprehension that people that live OTP — that’s my favorite word, outside of the Perimeter — that there’s nothing but the lame, the halt and the blind out here,” he said. “And it’s not that way.”
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