Jill Nolin, Georgia Recorder

A handful of Senate Republicans from rural Georgia have signed onto a new bipartisan attempt to fully expand Medicaid through a conservative-friendly option that gained traction last year after a decade of firm GOP resistance.

Four state senators hailing from south Georgia lent their names to a new Senate bill filed Tuesday that would expand health care coverage through a program that uses federal funding to purchase private insurance for individuals on the marketplace instead of adding more people to the state-run Medicaid program.

The bill would create a program called PeachCare Plus that would expand income eligibility to those who would be covered by traditional expansion, and it would create an advisory commission that would help guide the development of the program.

“We believe that this bipartisan legislation can actually get passed,” Senate Minority Leader Harold Jones, an Augusta Democrat, said at a press conference Tuesday.

Sen. Sam Watson of Moultrie said Tuesday that he is “open to the debate,” and Sen. Russ Goodman of Cogdell made no promises that he would vote for the bill if it makes it to the Senate floor but said he wants to have an “an open and honest debate about it.”

Cordele Sen. Carden Summers, who supported a similar proposal last year, and Statesboro Sen. Billy Hickman also signed the bill.

Goodman said his son was electrocuted in their swimming pool several years ago when he was 11 after lightning struck the pump house and damaged safety features. He credits his local hospital, which is about 10 miles from his blueberry farm, for saving his son’s life.

He said hospitals back home have told him that expanding Medicaid would help them ease the burden of indigent care.

“I think the main thing is to have it be argued on the merits,” Goodman said. “Isn’t that kind of what we’re supposed to do up here?”

Like last year’s bill, this proposal is patterned after the Arkansas model that intrigued the state’s GOP leaders, like House Speaker Jon Burns. But those same leaders had appeared to publicly cool to the idea.

Speaking to reporters early this month, Burns pointed to two factors that are shaping his current outlook on the issue: the governor remains a “steadfast” supporter of Georgia Pathways and the change in administration on the federal level.

Georgia Pathways to Coverage was approved by the Trump administration and then challenged by the Biden administration over its work requirement. Gov. Brian Kemp announced this month that the state will apply to renew the program, which would otherwise expire this September.

“We’re focused on what’s politically possible,” Burns said early this month. “And what we want to do in the House is help as many Georgians as we can, and if that’s the Pathways program, we’re all in.”

The state submitted its application to keep Georgia Pathways going for another five years last week.

Kemp has proposed a few changes, including making parents with children younger than six exempt from the requirement that participants complete 80 hours of work, job training, community service or another qualifying activity.

Two hearings, on Jan. 31 and Feb. 10, have been set to gather public input on the proposal.

Natalie Crawford, the executive director of Georgia First and a former Republican commissioner in Habersham County, said the governor’s revised Pathways plan is an improvement but said it still forgoes billions of federal dollars and misses out on the economic perks of full expansion.

She also argued the plan still omits key groups of Georgians.

“We’ve got a qualifying activities exemption for caregivers of children six and under, but what about family caregivers for aging and ailing parents? I mean, we Republicans are the party of family values. That’s a pretty big miss,” Crawford said.

Democrats also argue Kemp’s program cannot be fixed and say it’s time for Georgia to join the other 41 states that have fully expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act signed by former President Barack Obama in 2010.

“One of the issues about the governor’s plan is you’re basically trying to create a job program and a health insurance program combined,” Jones said. “That’s really the key part about that plan that becomes difficult. It’s an administrative nightmare.”

As of early January, about 6,500 people were enrolled in the program – which is well short of the nearly 100,000 the state said could sign up and the 345,000 total people who were thought to be eligible.

House Minority Leader Carolyn Hugley, a Columbus Democrat, said Democrats have a “moral obligation” to continue to push the issue.

“The greatest failure of Republican leadership is the lack of providing access to health care to Georgia citizens,” Hugley said.

Both Democratic chamber leaders said they believed the governor could be convinced to change his mind. But Kemp, whose term ends next year, has repeatedly reiterated his staunch opposition to full Medicaid expansion, including as recently as this month.

The first day of early voting in Georgia crushed the previous record for in-person turnout, with more than 300,000 people casting a ballot Tuesday.

The previous record was 136,000 votes on the first day of advanced voting in 2020, according to Georgia Secretary of State officials.

In polling places across vote-rich metro Atlanta, backers of both political parties showed up in droves to back their favorite candidates on a busy first day of the end of the 2024 election.

U.S. Rep. Nikema Williams, who is also chairwoman of the Democratic Party of Georgia, said late Monday afternoon that she was heartened by the turnout.

“We have shocked the nation in Georgia before with historic voter turnout in 2020 and now we are even surpassing that,” the Atlanta Democrat said. “I am confident that voters are choosing their freedom when they vote, but I also understand that there’s a lot more days of early voting to go, and so we have to keep this momentum going.”

The first day of early voting coincided with a visit from GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump, who did an all-women town hall in Cumming that will air Wednesday on Fox News and a late-night rally in Cobb County.

“I tell you what, I’m hearing very good things now. It hasn’t been going on too long, but we’re seeing numbers. They’re saying, ‘Wow, those are big numbers,'” Trump told rally-goers Tuesday.

Cherokee County

But there were also signs of energy among right-leaning voters.

When the polls at Rose Creek Public Library in Woodstock opened up at 8:30 a.m. on Tuesday, more than 75 people were already in a line stretching around the building and looping up in a closed-off section of the parking lot.

Voters line up at the Rose Creek Public Library in Woodstock for the first day of early voting. Ross Williams/Georgia Recorder

The library parking lot quickly filled up beyond capacity, and some parked their vehicles along the curb. Still, the crowd grew as people were dropped off out front or walked over from nearby lots.

Some of the voters were bundled up against the chilly weather, but the mood was generally jolly, with some clapping and cheering when poll workers officially opened the doors.

Sharon Krecl of Canton was one of the first to walk out the doors, along with a friend who did not want her name published.

Most of Tuesday’s early risers said they are constant early voters because it is more convenient for them than waiting until Election Day.

“We’ve got other things to do,” Krecl said. “We don’t want to be standing in line. We figure it’s going to be a very busy election year.”

Woodstock retiree James Tanner said he wanted to bank his vote for Donald Trump in case he buys the proverbial farm before Nov. 5.

“Well I wanted to get it over with. I might die before Election Day, I wanted to make sure I get counted,” he said with a laugh.

Tanner stepped out of the library wearing a cap naming him as a Purple Heart recipient.

Trump voter James Tanner of Woodstock gives the thumbs up after casting his ballot. Tanner was one of the first Georgians to vote on Tuesday. Ross Williams/Georgia Recorder

“I’m like Trump, I took a bullet for this country,” he said.

Tanner was far from the sole Trump voter who lined up early in Woodstock Tuesday. More than two-thirds of the county supported the former president against Democrat Joe Biden in 2020.

The local Democratic Party is hoping to make the district, sandwiched between the more liberal north Atlanta suburbs and conservative rural north Georgia, a little bluer, announcing visits from big names like Sen. Jon Ossoff and former gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, but most of Tuesday’s early voters said they want Trump back in office.

“He’s going to save America,” Tanner said. “America’s going down the hole, quick. Democrats, I don’t know what they got on their mind, but it ain’t America. We need somebody to take America back.”

“I just think he’s strong,” said Gail Kane of Woodstock. “I think he’s strong for our country, for somebody to go through what he’s going through and still keep running to be able to take care of our country, I mean, you can’t ask for better than that.”

Most of the voters listed border security, crime and the economy as their top concerns.

“He’s a businessman, so he’s dealt with other countries in his business and everything,” said Woodstock retiree George McCutchen. “So he knows what’s going on. It’s about running the country like a business. That’s the biggest thing.”

Some of the voters also expressed concern that the election might not be completely free or fair.

“We’re hoping, God willing,” Kane said. “I think the last election was a little bit, maybe, off. We’ll never know 100% for sure.”

“I think it’s more fair, too, when Election Day is Election Day,” she added. “Not election week or election couple days. Get it all done like we used to back in the old days. One day, count your votes the next day, whatever.”

Trump continues to allege malfeasance in the 2020 election, but his efforts to overturn the results have failed in multiple courts. In the past, the former president has expressed skepticism with early and absentee voting, implying that those votes are easier to falsify, but he has since moderated that stance and called on supporters to vote any way they can.

In a Tuesday morning press conference at the state Capitol, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger sought to quash worries about election security, touting measures including maintaining accurate voter lists by cooperating with other states, verifying that only U.S. citizens are able to vote and a 100% audit of all races.

“We have the cleanest, most accurate voter list in the entire country,” he said.

Atlanta

Trump and his supporters are hoping places like Cherokee continue to see big crowds at polling places, while Harris voters hope to see strong turnout in Atlanta and some of its more left-leaning suburbs.

Poll workers in Atlanta reported steady crowds Tuesday, including at the Joan P. Garner Library at Ponce De Leon, where Pamela Matthews, a retired government contractor, cast her ballot for Harris.

Matthews said she thinks Harris’ policies would be better for the middle class economically, and that she prefers the vice president’s position on abortion. But she said she worries Harris’ connection with her boss, President Joe Biden, could harm her chances in Georgia.

“It’s hard for her because of the split between her and Biden, and things that she probably would do different from Biden, she’s really not talking a lot about it because she’s still serving underneath him,” she said. “So that’s a disadvantage for her to me. But hopefully, I mean, it’s so close now that she’s going to have to separate herself from him and really talk about the things that she would do differently.”

Matthews said she hopes to see Harris separate herself from Biden on the economy, and especially the war in Gaza.

“So many people are losing their lives, so I hope that she will take a stance against that and speak up because she would probably do, I think, things a little bit different, but she really doesn’t say much because of the position that she’s still in,” she added.

Democrats’ chances at retaining the White House appeared to leap when Biden dropped out and Harris became the nominee, but Leah Foster of DeKalb County said Biden’s forced departure left a bad taste in her mouth.

Leah Foster cast her ballot for Kamala Harris Tuesday. Ross Williams/Georgia Recorder

Foster voted in DeKalb County Tuesday morning after a wait of just under an hour.

While she said she’s not happy about how she feels Biden was treated, she appreciates him setting up his vice president to be the nominee and was pleased to vote for her.

“I’m voting for someone who doesn’t have the baggage,” she said. “And I’m not talking about the 34 convictions. I’m not talking about the alleged rape. I’m not talking about any of that. I’m talking about the inability to put America first, the inability to put the country first.”

Foster said she thinks Trump is too self-centered to serve another term and would harm the nation’s reputation abroad.

“I’m not voting for the lesser of two evils. I hear people say that, but I don’t view her as evil,” she said. “I view her as this is her time. This is America’s time. This is America’s time to say once again on the world stage who we are. Biden has brought back a lot of credibility to America on the world stage, and I just do not think that Trump would continue that. I think that we would fall back with him at the helm in that regard.”

Frankie Brown, right, and his friend and neighbor Ella Stephens, voted together in Atlanta Tuesday. Ross Williams/Georgia Recorder

Frankie Brown said he voted for a full Democratic ticket. He said on election night he’ll be watching the House and Senate results as closely as the presidential race.

“Republicans aren’t capable and aren’t ready to do anything but just flex their muscle and stuff, but I think we can get something done with the Democratic party,” he said. “We’ve got plans, we’ve got voting power, all we’ve got to do is make sure we get the Senate, that’s going to be a little worse, but I’m positive.”

Polls suggest a slim Republican majority could be the most likely outcome in the Senate, while control of the House is more difficult to predict. Brown said he hopes a Democratic trifecta will allow the party to take action in his most important issues, abortion and gun control.

Britany Hellyar-Luna, who voted in East Point in south Fulton County, showed up on the first day of early voting to avoid the lines. Also, she said there was no point waiting when she already knew how she planned to vote.

“As a same-sex couple, we want to protect our rights too,” she said as she left East Point First Mallalieu United Methodist Church, which is an early voting location. “That was not a hard thing to vote Kamala versus Trump.”

Octavis Smith voted early in south Fulton County on the first day he could, mostly because he wanted to get it over with. Jill Nolin/Georgia Recorder

Octavis Smith voted at the same East Point location on the first day but he said he mostly voted early just to get it over with so people would stop hassling him about the election.

Disillusioned by the negative ads and what he sees as self-serving politicians, the Democrat-leaning voter said he was not particularly enthusiastic about any candidate but ultimately backed Harris because he said he wants to see what she would do with the opportunity to potentially become the country’s first woman president.

“I really do want to see what she is going to do. I mean, I already saw what Trump is going to do,” he said.

Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr has asked the state Supreme Court to allow Georgia’s six-week abortion ban to be enforced again while the state’s appeal is being considered.

The six-week ban was tossed aside Monday when Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert C. I. McBurney ruled that it conflicts with the Georgia Constitution’s privacy and liberty protections.

Georgia’s 2019 law bans most abortion once fetal cardiac activity is detected, which is about six weeks into a pregnancy and before most women know they are pregnant. McBurney’s ruling resurrected Georgia’s previous law, which allows abortions until about 20 weeks.

Carr has appealed the ruling and is arguing that more harm would be done by letting expanded abortion services continue while the appeal is pending than not.

“The harm to the State and the public is significant and irreparable, as unborn children are at risk every day that the injunction continues. This Court granted a stay in nearly identical circumstances two years ago, and it should do the same here,” reads the state’s petition for emergency intervention.

The state’s attorneys argue that the ban should be restored because they say the state is likely to succeed in having the lower court’s ruling overturned, partly because they argue the Georgia Constitution is – and always has been – silent on abortion.

And the state pushed back on McBurney’s conclusion that the law’s treatment of pregnant women with a psychiatric crisis amounts to a violation of the state’s equal protection clause, arguing state lawmakers are not bound to treat the two identically.

“As before, every day that illegal abortions continue is another day that the lives of tiny, unique individuals are ended. There are toddlers alive today because this Court stayed the superior court’s previous order,” the state’s attorneys wrote in Wednesday’s filing.

The move was expected – it’s what the state requested back in 2022 when McBurney first ruled the ban unconstitutional – but attorneys and advocates on the other side of the case had hoped the state would let the lower court’s ruling stand.

Abortion rights supporters have blamed the six-week ban for the deaths of two pregnant women who died trying to have an abortion in the months after the law first took effect in 2022. Recent revelations about their deaths have reignited debate over Georgia’s law, specifically its medical emergency exception for mothers, that has spilled onto the national stage.

Monica Simpson, executive director of SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective, which is the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit, said in a statement Wednesday that she was disappointed but not surprised by the state’s request to “reinstate this deadly abortion ban.”

“Time and time again, we see anti-abortion extremists using our bodies for political gain instead of advocating for the safety and health of all Georgians,” Simpson said.

“This abortion ban has forced Georgians to spend hundreds traveling across state lines and stole the lives of Amber Nicole Thurman and Candi Miller. This extremist crusade only further disregards our bodily autonomy, our lives, and our dignity.”

Andrea Young, executive director of the ACLU of Georgia, which is part of the legal team challenging the law, said the state is taking an “extreme position to have control over decisions about reproductive rights.”

“We have already seen the tragic consequences of this extreme policy and we will continue to fight in the courts and at the ballot box,” Young said.

But anti-abortion advocates have blasted the attempts to tie the women’s deaths to the controversial 2019 law and accused Democrats of trying to capitalize on the tragedies.

Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Georgia Recorder maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor John McCosh for questions: info@georgiarecorder.com. Follow Georgia Recorder on Facebook and X.

Abortion rights advocates are cheering Monday’s court ruling that brought back expanded services in Georgia, even as they brace for the likelihood that further judicial action could make it short-lived.

And supporters of Georgia’s six-week abortion ban hope they are right.

Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr’s office has already said the state will appeal a Fulton County judge’s ruling that the law conflicts with the Georgia Constitution, putting it back in the hands of the Georgia Supreme Court. Carr’s office has not said whether the state will ask the state’s highest court to allow the ban to be enforced while an appeal is pending.

That’s what happened in 2022, when the ban was back to being enforced within a week of a Fulton County ruling that the law was unconstitutional.

“Unfortunately, we have lived through this many times before. We know that our communities have unfortunately been jerked around by changes in the law that happened overnight,” said Kwajelyn Jackson, executive director of Feminist Women’s Health Center.

Georgia’s 2019 law bans most abortion once fetal cardiac activity is detected, which is about six weeks into a pregnancy and before most women know they are pregnant.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert C. I. McBurney’s ruling that the law is unconstitutional comes just weeks before early voting starts in Georgia, including for state legislative races and the presidential election where access to reproductive care has been a dominant issue.

And the decision was also issued two weeks after ProPublica published stories about two pregnant women, Amber Nicole Thurman and Candi Miller, who died after trying to have an abortion shortly after Georgia’s law took effect in 2022.

Both deaths were officially deemed preventable by the state’s Maternal Mortality Review Committee, according to ProPublica, which also reported that the committee that reviews maternal deaths has only examined deaths through the fall of 2022.

Their deaths have galvanized supporters of reproductive rights, who have long warned of dire outcomes. Advocates gathered outside the state Capitol Saturday to pay tribute to Thurman and Miller and to rally people to act, both during this election but also when lawmakers return to the Gold Dome in January when there will be a fresh push to repeal the law.

Vice President Kamala Harris visited the Atlanta suburbs just days after the stories were published to give a speech focused on reproductive rights, and Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz cited Thurman’s death during Tuesday night’s debate when making the case that having state-by-state abortion laws is wrong.

“The fact of the matter is, how can we as a nation say that your life and your rights – as basic as the right to control your own life – is determined on geography? There’s a very real chance that if Amber Thurman lived in Minnesota, she would be alive today.”

Rep. Dar’shun Kendrick, a Lithonia Democrat, said she immediately thought of the two women when she heard about McBurney’s ruling.

“We won’t stop as your Georgia Democrats until abortion access is throughout the nation,” Kendrick said Tuesday at a press conference called by House Democrats to applaud the ruling. “We won’t go back, as Vice President Harris said.

“It might be too late for Amber and Candi, but their legacy and their story continue. Her and others give us the strength we need to carry on,” Kendrick said.

But anti-abortion advocates have blasted the attempts to tie the women’s deaths to the controversial 2019 law and accused Democrats of trying to capitalize on the tragedies. Women Speak Out PAC, a partner of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, announced it would spend $500,000 on digital and TV ads in Georgia countering what it says is misinformation about the law

“As policy makers, we should be presenting policy that improves outcomes rather than fear mongering and lying to women about a law that does not prevent lifesaving care,” state Rep. Lauren Daniel, a Locust Grove Republican, said at a Tuesday press conference to defend the six-week ban that was already in the works before Monday’s ruling.

“It does not limit care for miscarriages, and it provides exceptions for medically futile babies and in cases of rape and incest,” said Daniel, who said she experienced a miscarriage last month and was presented three options, including a dilation and curettage, or D&C.

Backers of Georgia’s 2019 law argue the women’s deaths highlight the risks attached to abortion medication, and they say Thurman’s medical providers failed her when they waited 20 hours to perform a D&C since her twin fetuses did not have a heartbeat at that point.

Complications from medication abortion, which has been the most common way to terminate a pregnancy since 2020, are rare.

“Chemical abortion followed by malpractice from her health care providers is what killed Amber Nicole Thurman,” said state Sen. Ed Setzler, an Acworth Republican who sponsored the 2019 abortion measure.

Setzler said Thurman’s “health care providers had every mechanism they needed within our law to save her life.” And he called McBurney’s ruling “naked judicial activism.”

U.S. Congressman Rich McCormick, a Suwanee Republican and emergency room physician, argued Thurman’s death cannot be pinned on Georgia’s ban because her fetuses were already dead when she showed up at an Atlanta area hospital with sepsis that resulted from an incomplete abortion.

“There’s no application to this law to this case, unless you can tell me there was a heartbeat,” McCormick said. “It is a misused story to try to scare people to think that this law causes death, when in fact, it is the opposite.”

Kendrick, who is also an attorney, dismissed those objections. She said the law is ambiguous and forces doctors to wait until a patient’s life is clearly at risk before they intervene.

“They can claim all they want to, but the law is poorly, poorly written and never should have passed in the first place,” Kendrick said.

Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Georgia Recorder maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor John McCosh for questions: info@georgiarecorder.com. Follow Georgia Recorder on Facebook and X.

National and state Democrats plan to file a lawsuit on behalf of local election officials challenging a controversial new rule requiring election workers to hand count ballots on election day.

The Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Party of Georgia, with support from the Harris campaign, will challenge a rule passed this month that was pushed through by three state election board members that former President Donald Trump said are “pit bulls fighting for honesty, transparency and victory.”

The new rule requires that three poll workers sort ballots into piles of 50 and count every ballot to determine if the hand count accurately aligns with the number of total ballots scanned at each polling location on Election Day.

The complaint will be filed in Fulton County on behalf of election officials in Fulton, DeKalb, Gwinnett and Forsyth counties.

The new rule was passed a little more than a week ago over the objections of Attorney General Chris Carr and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who are both Republicans. Carr warned at the time that the board’s action likely exceeded the panel’s authority.

Others cautioned that the new rule would result in chaos and delays reporting results in the swing state for the Nov. 5 presidential election.

The lawsuit points to those concerns raised at the time and argues the new rule conflicts with state election code and “violates foundational limits on agencies that are intended to avoid precisely the scenario here — an unelected body unilaterally making significant changes to the law without notice or explanation,” according to the lawsuit, which was obtained by the Georgia Recorder.

“To protect the sanctity of the state’s laws and to prevent election night chaos, this Court should declare that the Hand Count Rule exceeds SEB’s statutory authority and enjoin that rule from going into effect,” the lawsuit reads.

The lawsuit is asking the court to deem the rule invalid.

“As Donald Trump invents facts to try to sow doubt in our elections, his MAGA allies in Georgia passed a new rule just weeks before Election Day that will obstruct the process of counting votes so they can complain when voters reject Trump at the polls,” Harris-Walz Campaign principal deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks said in a statement.

Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Georgia Recorder maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor John McCosh for questions: info@georgiarecorder.com. Follow Georgia Recorder on Facebook and X.

The Democratic Party is set to gavel in its national convention Monday in Chicago, and the Peach State will have a big presence.

Georgia will provide 108 pledged delegates and another 15 automatic delegates, better known as superdelegates. All of them are expected to support Vice President Kamala Harris in her efforts to win the state and take back the White House.

A full list of speakers has not yet been released, but recent conventions have seen speeches from Georgia names like Stacey Abrams and Jason Carter, and Georgia’s delegation is set to hear from major Democratic players from across the country.

Harris took a spot at the top of the ticket last month after President Joe Biden announced he would not be seeking re-election and endorsed her to run in his place. Delegates swiftly joined her camp, and no challengers for the nomination emerged ahead of a virtual DNC vote early this month.

Former President Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, has called the candidate swap a coup and an attack on democracy, but Democratic voters do not seem to feel the same way. Polls suggest Harris’ movement to the top of the ticket has increased Democrats’ chances in key swing states, including Georgia.

To Parker Short, it’s hard to overstate the level of enthusiasm among Democrats going into the convention.

Short is the famously enthusiastic president of the Young Democrats of Georgia who became a viral sensation last month when a video circulated of him singing and dancing at Vice President Kamala Harris’ rally in Atlanta shortly after she became the new likely nominee.

And he’s just as fired up today as the 22-year-old Georgia delegate prepares to make Harris and Tim Walz the party’s official nominees.

“It’s no secret that when Harris became the nominee, everything changed. The vibe changed, the momentum changed, the energy changed,” Short said. “It was like we had a shot of espresso and a nice nap and we were really ready to get out there.”

Short said left-leaning voters were hungry for a candidate who could take the fight to Trump and feel like they have found that in Harris. The energy surrounding the campaign, he said, reminds him of the nationally watched U.S. Senate runoffs in early 2021 that elected Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock and handed Democrats control of the chamber.

But Joshua McKoon, who chairs the Georgia Republican Party, argues that the surge of enthusiasm among Democrats is just a “sugar high.”

“It’s like someone drinking a sugary cola. You get a sugar high, and then you have the crash,” McKoon said last week on the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Politically Georgia podcast. “And the crash is going to come. It may come Sept. 10. It may come before then. But sooner or later, (Harris is) going to come into contact with unscripted discussion, whether that’s with President Trump or reporters, and that’s when the wheels are really going to start coming off.”

Under pressure, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump agreed to debate Harris on Sept. 10. Harris and her allies had heavily criticized Trump for backing out of a debate that was planned when Biden was still the expected Democratic nominee.

Democrats may have their work cut out for them, particularly in competitive states like Georgia, but Short argued the energy behind Harris and Walz is hardly fleeting.

“This is not a sugar high. We are running a marathon, and they’re just a little scared that we’re faster. They’re looking behind us like ‘no way we can keep up this pace.’ Sorry, our candidate is not 80 years old anymore,” Short said.

Zachary Peskowitz, a political science professor at Emory University, said he thinks of Harris’ momentum upon entering the race as a “turbocharged convention bump” that will be a memory soon.

After all, it is not the only unexpected plot twist that has been met with a lopsided groundswell of support in this year’s presidential race. It was just a month ago when an attempted assassination of Trump at a Pennsylvania rally left many feeling the race was all but over.

It may not be until after Labor Day before the race begins to stabilize, Peskowitz said.

The Harris effect is likely to have a long-term impact on the race in Georgia, though. Her campaign quickly set its sights on a state Biden narrowly won in 2020, holding one of her first rallies in Atlanta and including Savannah in a planned battleground swing across the country before Hurricane Debby interfered.

But whether Georgia has much of a starring role during the convention remains to be seen. The Republican National Convention was light on Georgia speakers, but that was also back when polls showed Trump with an edge here. Some prognosticators now consider Georgia to be a toss-up, though Peskowitz said he thinks Trump would still be the slight favorite if voting happened today.

“Even if the state isn’t explicitly mentioned, I think a lot of the messaging will be with the intention of doing well in Georgia and increasing the probability that the Democrats hold on to it in November,” he said.

Harris has work to do to win over voters who disapprove of Biden’s performance when it comes to the economy, Peskowitz said.

“That’s very important particularly when talking about the Atlanta suburbs and moderate voters who aren’t strongly attached to either party. Their assessments of the Biden economic performance is not so positive, and so I think that’s going to be an issue for Harris,” he said.

Ahead of the convention, Harris rolled out her first detailed economic policy proposal Friday, laying out how she’d like to ease rent increases, boost first-time home buyers, end grocery price gouging and bolster the child tax credit.

While the speeches, the glitz and the glamor may be fun, the real work will not be televised, said Emory University political science professor Andra Gillespie.

“In particular, what comes out of the convention or what’s going to be most important for Kamala Harris in Georgia is the buildup of her campaign team and her staff, and that’s happening behind the scenes,” she said.

“Her shot at winning this race depends on her putting together a flawless get-out-the-vote operation,” she added. “Conventions don’t vote, rallies don’t vote, press releases don’t vote, but voters do, and you’ve got to touch voters where they are. And she should primarily be focused on getting out voters who are already inclined to support the Democratic Party.

Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Georgia Recorder maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor John McCosh for questions: info@georgiarecorder.com. Follow Georgia Recorder on Facebook and X.

COLUMBUS – First lady Jill Biden rallied Democrats in a west Georgia community that’s home to one of the country’s largest military bases Monday as the Biden-Harris campaign works to tamp down concerns after President Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance in Atlanta more than a week ago.

The first lady, who is one of the president’s fiercest surrogates, hit the campaign trail with a three-stop swing through battleground states as the president ramped up his efforts to firmly reject calls for him to bow out of the race.

The trio of events was part of the campaign’s launch of Veterans and Military Families for Biden-Harris. Fort Moore, formerly Fort Benning, is near Columbus.

And while the rally was focused on Biden’s record supporting the military, such as the Honoring our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics Act, or the PACT Act, which expanded health care eligibility, there was no avoiding the ongoing fallout from the CNN debate.

“That 90 minutes means nothing. You don’t define a president in 90 minutes,” Gloria Tyson, U.S. Army veteran and owner of Kidz.com Child Development Center, said to the crowd as she introduced the first lady in Columbus.

Monday brought a string of more developments just weeks ahead of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago where the party is set to officially nominate Biden. The day started with the president telling congressional Democrats he would not step aside despite mounting concerns, and he also called into MSNBC’s Morning Joe and vowed to stay in the race. “I am not going anywhere,” Biden said.

But by the afternoon, Biden’s press secretary was caught in a testy exchange with reporters over the president’s health.

“For all the talk out there about this race, Joe has made it clear that he’s all in,” Jill Biden said to the crowd, which began to chant “four more years.”

“That’s the decision that he’s made, and just as he has always supported my career, I’m all in too,” she said inside the Bibb Mill Event Center, which is a century-old mill-turned-event venue that sits alongside the Chattahoochee River. “I know you are too, or you wouldn’t be here today.”

The Bidens have also leaned into their personal story as a military family. Biden’s son Beau Biden, a veteran, suffered from a rare form of brain cancer and died in May 2015, years after being deployed to Iraq.

In Georgia, Democrats have largely stuck with Biden.

State Sen. Ed Harbison, who is a Columbus Democrat who joined the first lady on stage Monday night, said Democrats who are questioning whether Biden should be the nominee are losing sight of the goal.

“To those people who have concerns about it, I would just like to reassure them to get over it, get focused and get going,” Harbison said before Monday’s rally. “It’s too late to do anything that would be a drastic change like that. That’s just impractical.”

“Let’s go ahead, get it done and get moving. Get over it. One debate does not a campaign make,” he said.

Former Georgia Congresswoman Carolyn Bourdeaux is an example of the rare Georgia Democrat who has said Biden should step aside. But others have voiced unease with the trajectory of the 2024 presidential election with Biden at the top of the ticket.

Stacy Richardson, who lives in Pine Mountain, made the short trek Monday to Columbus in search of reassurance after she said Biden’s debate performance left her nervous and wondering whether that kind of episode could happen at any time.

Richardson said she admires Biden and the accomplishments of his presidency and long career in public service, but as she waited for the first lady to take the stage, Richardson said she was not convinced Biden was the best candidate to face former President Donald Trump in November.

“I don’t want to write him off,” Richardson said. “I’d like to see a little more, maybe a couple more interviews that are unscripted, a couple more appearances without a teleprompter and things that are a little more challenging.”

She said she would also like to see the campaign address the president’s health “head on.”

“I feel bad because I totally appreciate what his presidency did, and I believe in all that. He accomplished so much. I’m just really worried about the alternative,” she said.

Biden narrowly won Georgia in 2020 by about 12,000 votes, becoming the first Democratic presidential candidate to win here in three decades and cementing the state’s battleground status. Polling has so far given Trump a slight edge in Georgia.

“For me, I feel like it’s so important to have someone in that office who is honest, and I think he’s honest,” state Rep. Debbie Buckner, a Junction City Democrat, said of Biden.

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