Georgia Politics and the Indictments

( Alex Brandon/AP )
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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning everyone. Here's a really important thing about the Trump indictment in Georgia that's not about his guilt or innocence, it's about who wins there in 2024. Georgia, don't forget has become an ultimate swing state in presidential elections and for control of the United States Senate. Biden won there by two-tenths of 1% according to the certified results or around just 12,000 votes out of nearly 5 million cast. Georgians have elected Republican Governor Brian Kemp twice now over Democrat Stacey Abrams, but both its US Senators are Democrats, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock. Georgia is an ultimate swing state these days.
If this trial is taking place in 2024 over charges of crimes being committed locally in Georgia well, there's a lot at stake that will be determined by voters, not jurors. To complicate matters even more, maybe you heard this, Trump announced yesterday that he will stage some event next Monday at his Bedminster Golf Club in New Jersey to try to convince people even now of presidential election fraud in Georgia in 2020. Let's talk about the implications of the 2020 election-related legal process for the 2024 election political process with Stephen Fowler State and Local Politics Reporter for Georgia Public Broadcasting and host of their podcast Battleground: Ballot Box. Stephen, thanks for coming on with us amid all this breaking news in your state. Hello.
Stephen Fowler: Of course, always a pleasure.
Brian Lehrer: Let's start with this Georgia Focus news conference that Trump says he'll hold next Monday. I see Republican Governor Brian Kemp has already issued a public statement kind of a prebuttal I guess. What's Governor Kemp saying?
Stephen Fowler: Well, first we don't actually know what Donald Trump is going to say on Monday or if he's actually going to have it. There is no massive report of election fraud in Georgia. Georgia had three different counts of his presidential election including once where five million ballots were counted by hand. Most of these claims have been shot down by the courts, shot down by elections officials, shot down by common sense, and yet nevertheless we will still have this going. Brian, Kemp responded to that by saying the 2020 election was not stolen.
Kemp is one of the few Republicans that has stood up to the false claims of fraud quite forcefully and actually been electorally rewarded for that. Kemp was expected to have another tight rematch against Democrat Stacey Abrams, but ended up relatively blowing it out of the water winning in a landslide in a state that is very purple, but winning more commanding than some Republicans and Democrats expected.
Brian Lehrer: I see the Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger also reelected statewide after his conflict with Trump about 2020 also reaffirmed the integrity of the results just yesterday. That's what's making national news today. Trump announcing this Monday news conference, Kemp and Raffenspergerare responding, but going down from there Stephen, I'm curious are Republican elected officials in Georgia other than those two divided to any meaningful degree on this issue?
Stephen Fowler: Yes and no. I think there are quite a few Republicans that would like to talk about anything other than 2020 which is somewhere in the happy medium between re-litigating it for a third straight year and forcefully moving past and making the uncomfortable assertion that Trump's 2020 focus is harming the party. You have a Republican majority legislature state house, state senate. You have most counties in Georgia, actual raw number of counties are Republican-dominated smaller rural counties. With that said, there are plenty of people in Georgia that are very defensive and defending the president. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Northwest Georgia Congresswoman is the first one that comes to mind, but there are also plenty of Republicans that would love to talk about literally anything else.
Brian Lehrer: Why do you think Kemp and Raffensperger then decided to respond so quickly to even the idea of Trump trying to make stolen election claims again? I heard your skepticism about whether this so-called Trump news conference will even take place, so why did they come out so quickly yesterday rather than wait to see what if anything he says and then address the specifics?
Stephen Fowler: Well, looking at Raffensperger, Raffensperger is this mild-mannered engineer, capital C conservative, one of the most conservative statewide elected officials in Georgia. His brand and reputation is thoroughly intertwined with the integrity of Georgia's election system. Before 2020, he went toe to toe with Democrats who said voter suppression was actually keeping Georgia from being a blue state, and the system needed to be changed and laws needed to be changed. He defended things and said Georgia has voting laws that lead the country, turnout that leads the country, easy to vote, hard to cheat, and so now that he's got his own party turning the cannon on him he's pushed back on that, just the facts aren't there.
Again in the primary election in 2022, Trump unleashed an array of people that supported him and attacked the 2020 election to try to unseat a lot of Republican officials like Raffensperger and Kemp, and they got destroyed. Raffensperger and Brian Kemp received a considerable amount of crossover support in the primary. You don't have to register with a party in Georgia, but we can look at voter history to see that Democrats and people that have voted in Democratic primaries before voted in the Republican primary and voted for Kemp and Raffensperger, and then even in the general election the two top vote-getters in Georgia were Brian Kemp and Brad Raffensperger.
Kemp is term-limited. He doesn't have to worry about running for governor again, but he is in the mix for potentially the 2026 Senate race, and so he's burnishing his national credentials and things by saying, "Look, we need to stop talking about 2020 otherwise Republicans aren't going to win." Raffensperger is potentially going to run for governor in 2026. The way to run for governor a couple of years from now in a state that you need people from across the spectrum to vote for you, this is a little bit political, but also I think personal for both of them, because they went through the wringer death threats, harassment all sorts of things from Trump and his supporters, and so it's political and personal.
Brian Lehrer: I see that Kemp won his gubernatorial primary against the Trump-backed David Perdue last year by more than 50 points. You're telling me though that some of those voters were Democrats because you're allowed to cross over in primaries in Georgia. What do you think that suggests for the 2024 presidential primary coming up on March 12th? Can Democrats vote in the Republican primary there too? Because presumably there's not going to be a meaningful Democratic presidential primary, so if there's a contest that everybody who's engaged in politics might want to weigh in on because the law allows them to it would be the Republican primary.
Stephen Fowler: Yes. I think you have to look at it differently. The primary electorate especially in a Republican primary and the general electorate don't think about things the same way and the national electorate and the national polling and what's good and true and accurate in Georgia are two different conversations as well. Donald Trump will not win all of Georgia's Republican primary delegates because Georgia's a state that goes in the Republican calendar that'll be proportional based on congressional district and so on and so forth, but you won't see hoards of Democrats voting to give all of the states Republican delegates to somebody like Ron DeSantis or Mike Pence or anybody like that.
The primary electorate in Georgia is still very much a Trump primary electorate, but the general election Donald Trump is starting behind the eight ball in court and public opinion in Georgia Brian, because Georgia is one of the states where Trump lost in 2020. It's also one of the states where he unleashed a multi-pronged effort to harass and cajole officials into changing that. If you are in Georgia, and if you are the voter that voted for Biden and maybe Republican down ballot in 2020 and maybe voted for Kemp, but Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock in 2022 you're not all of a sudden going to change your mind and say, " Mmm, I'm going to vote for Trump again and go back."
I think the genie is out of the bottle there. If Trump campaigns, if Trump faces trial in Georgia in 2024, and if he continues to focus on false claims about Georgia's election, you can put the Georgia's electoral votes a little bit bluer to start when having prognosticating next year.
Brian Lehrer: Interesting. Listeners, anyone listening in Georgia right now want to call in, and say anything or ask anything about the relationship of the Trump indictment announced at the state level this week and the 2024 election in any way. Anyone not in Georgia may also call or text to 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692 or tweet @BrianLehrer for Stephen Fowler, political reporter for Georgia Public Broadcasting.
I don't know if there's ever been, to the point you were just making, such a confluence of a legal process and an election process in this country's history. Are there local Georgia people named in this indictment? Remember, it's Trump plus 18 other defendants, whose cases may play differently from Trump's or add to the Georgia politics of it all next year.
Stephen Fowler: Yes and no. There are 19 people listed and getting charged. There are also 30 unindicted co-conspirators, and some of them are known only to the grand jury, some of them, parsing through the indictments, are Georgia ties. Only 3 of the 16 fake electors in Georgia are indicted. That's the former Republican Party Chairman David Shafer, Shawn Still, who is a current state senator, and Cathy Latham, a former Rural County Republican Party Chairwoman, who is also being charged for involvement with a plan to illegally copy election data from voting machines and equipment in that county. The other 13 didn't get charged. Many of them took immunity deals. They're not getting charged. A lot of them are party functionaries from across the state.
Another unindicted co-conspirator that is also a fake elector is Georgia's lieutenant governor, the number two in the state. Just yesterday, it was reported that a special prosecutor will be appointed to investigate to see if he's worthy of any charges because Burt Jones is Georgia's lieutenant governor. He was one of the fake electors and heavily involved in the state senate hearings where you had false claims from Rudy Giuliani and others, but he successfully was able to avoid being investigated by the Fulton County District Attorney because there's a conflict. The Fulton County District Attorney, Fani Willis held a fundraiser for a guy named Charlie Bailey, who ended up being the Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor running against Burt Jones. That's a conflict.
Burt Jones escaped scrutiny in this first round but was one of the unindicted co-conspirators, and could be facing charges from a different prosecutor. This reverberates through the Georgia political circles because it focuses so much on these elected officials in the senate that had these hearings. It focuses so much too on the split between the official state party apparatus and Brian Kemp, and Brad Raffensperger, and other top Republicans.
Brian Lehrer: Well, let's talk more about Fani Willis and the politics around her. She was elected DA. This is an elected district attorney position, elected as a Democrat in Atlanta and the rest of Fulton County. Trump is accusing her, of course, of having run on a campaign of I'll get Trump thereby politicizing the indictment before there was even a grand jury in place. How did she run with respect to Trump, if at all?
Stephen Fowler: Well, Trump was a non-factor in the district attorney race. The judicial district that includes Atlanta is basically just Atlanta and Fulton County, which is Georgia's most populous. Willis ran unseated longtime Democrat Paul Howard who was there because there were allegations of corruption, and mismanagement, and inefficiency in the prosecutor's office. Fani Willis ran on a localized race dealing with how the district attorney's office in Atlanta ran.
Then before she officially really took office, all of the shenanigans around the 2020 election happened, and as she's stepping into this office, is when Trump calls Raffensperger and says, "I just want you to find 11,780 votes." In many ways, her political fortunes so far in office have aligned themselves with Trump, but she is not among the prosecutors that you've seen across the country since 2016 that have run as a foil against Trump and his views on criminal justice and law and order.
Brian Lehrer: Any Kemp or Raffensperger moments attacking or supporting DA Willis's integrity or independence, even as they uphold the election results?
Stephen Fowler: Well, yes, and that's where it's different. It's different because the district attorney has purview over all crimes in this county, not just 2020 election-related. Georgia actually passed and signed a law earlier this year creating this prosecutorial oversight council that would basically be a vehicle to hear and discipline district attorneys and solicitors general that they feel don't necessarily fully live up to the oath of their office. Some of this comes from issues that other district attorneys in Georgia have had across the aisle of not doing their job.
Think back to the Ahmaud Arbery case, the jogger who was shot and killed by two white men. The district attorney there slow-walked the case, gave it to somebody else who slow-walked the case and there were some conflicts. There was no punishment for that. She was punished at the ballot box when voters voted her out because of inaction, but there's not really any recourse other than impeachment or other high-bar ways to punish prosecutors that don't do their jobs well. This commission is put into place, and Fani Willis and other democratic prosecutors in the state have been mentioned by Republicans for how they handle crime, and murder, and other things as part of the Republican talking point and policy point around criminal justice, and not necessarily the, "I don't think you're doing your job well."
Now that said, Kemp did fight subpoena to testify to the special purpose grand jury that met last year, that was an investigative jury, but no, you won't find them impugning the investigation at all or Willis as a prosecutor.
Brian Lehrer: Interesting. Well, even if Kemp and Raffensperger don't, what about this council, which was put into place by the Republican legislature? Listeners in New York will remember that the Republican candidate for governor last year Lee Zeldin ran on removing the Manhattan DA. There is a process in New York State by which he could have at least tried to do that. That was not related to Trump. That was because he considered DA Bragg soft on crime for being a progressive prosecutor. It sounds like there's some of that same conversation around Fani Willis. If they wanted to pivot and say, "Oh, look at this political prosecution that she's bringing against the former president," can they do that? Is it a real risk?
Stephen Fowler: No, it's not a real risk. Look to Georgia's judicial qualification commission, which is a similar setup that's actually been in place for a while dealing with judges. Just this morning, the Georgia Supreme Court ruled that a judge should be removed from office after a years-long suspension process, years-long multiple hearings, blatant examples of impropriety, of failed attempts to remove him where the supreme court said, "No, this has to be just right."
It's incredibly hard to remove somebody like a judge or a district attorney from office unless there is this blatant violation of law and violation of crime. It's not like what you're seeing to the south of us in Florida where Governor Ron DeSantis has removed prosecutors using his broad latitude for failing to do the job the way he thinks that they should do their jobs.
It's a good talking point. It's a good thing to get into the ether if you are a supporter of former president Trump, and you want to cast aspersions on this process, but functionally speaking, you're not going to see it used to immediately remove a prosecutor, let alone have it actually have the full process and time take out to actually go through with hearings, and appeals, and so on and so forth. It's something a bit like a pipe dream and a good talking point that's not grounded in the reality.
Brian Lehrer: Here is Gabriel in McIntosh County, Georgia, calling in. Gabriel, you're on WNYC with Stephen Fowler, political reporter for Georgia Public Broadcasting. Hi, Gabriel.
Gabriel: Hey, Brian. Hey, Mr. Fowler. How are you doing today?
Stephen Fowler: Good.
Gabriel: I had a question regarding the reasons why the former Trump administration may have come down to Georgia. Was there a historical precedent for having success in terms of trying to pull something like this off in the past and might this have gone through, had certain individuals not stepped up and either blown the whistle or come out with the truth? Then the other thing I just wanted to say real quick, dispatches from rural Georgia is that people are becoming dissatisfied with what's going on right now with these indictments not because they disagree with them necessarily but just because looking bad. I've noticed that there are people who are old and young who are starting to jump allegiances from Trump to RFK Junior.
Brian Lehrer: Have you heard anything like that, Stephen, jumping from Trump to RFK Junior?
Stephen Fowler: That, I have not, but I will say to the question about individuals doing things differently, it was an unprecedented series of events that happened in the aftermath of the 2020 election with the pressure campaign, both overt and covert, to get officials to change the results. There are a small number of people that did stick to their guns and did stand up and say, "This is how this works. There was no fraud," and things like that.
Had those gone differently? Just look at other states where the results were still close, but not as close. Look at Arizona where there was a costly partisan audit of ballots in the Maricopa County election that cost millions of dollars and months and months only to discover that there was actually a larger margin for Joe Biden than the first time that they counted.
Brian Lehrer: That was a Republican-backed audit. Go ahead.
Stephen Fowler: It was a Republican-backed audit. I think if the Republican Secretary of State and the Republican governor and the Republican US attorney that was removed from office for not saying there was election fraud, I think it's hard to know what would've happened. I think the fact that you did have Republicans say these things to the Republican president and defend the results in a Republican-controlled state, I think strengthened against the attempts to overturn the election.
It's hard to say what would have happened if they would've done things differently, but you did have people in the positions of power as shown in these indictments, that could have done things differently because they had those said positions. If the chief election official who had the power to certify results said, "I'm not certifying these results. I don't trust them," there would have been a lot more weight to him doing that because he has the legal power of certification and the legal control over the office than if he would have done the opposite and said, "I'm certifying these results because they're true and fair and I trust them," if that makes sense.
Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer in WNYC. We're talking with Georgia Public Broadcasting political reporter, Stephen Fowler, about the election-year implications of the Trump indictment in the state, this unprecedented intersection of the political and the legal in one of the ultimate presidential swing states for next year as it was in 2020. We presume it will be the same next year. Just really, really close. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Scott in San Jose who grew up in Georgia, we see you. You'll be the next call as we continue in a minute.
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Brian Lehrer on WNYC as we continue on Georgia as one of the ultimate 2024 swing states next year with the election running parallel to the legal process that got launched this week with the indictment of Trump and 18 co-defendants in the 2020 election fraud case. Our guest is Stephen Fowler, political reporter for Georgia Public Broadcasting and host of their podcast, Battleground: Ballot Box. Our phone number, 212-433-WNYC. Scott in San Jose, you're on WNYC. Thanks for calling in, Scott. Hi.
Scott: Hey. Thank you, Brian, and thank you, Stephen. Appreciate you taking my call. I told the screener that I had grown up in Georgia. The interesting thing, being from a very large family and just amidst my family and the friends that I'm close to, still there is a very, very, very wide spectrum in terms of the number of people who are arts conservative Republicans and also very liberal Democrats. The amount of difference in the type of media they consume really distorts what their views of factual reality in certain situations is.
I follow the congressional races and gubernatorial races really closely, even though I live in California. Two points is, one, I'd like to say that I really appreciated the integrity of Brad Raffensperger in particular. Also, I'm a little broader. I'm amazed that I don't hear much more being talked about, even as the fake elector schemes are coming up, that there's not a lot more talked about in terms of the number of Congress and the number of senators. I think there's 147 who voted against certifying the presidential election, and it seems like it's largely forgotten and nobody is being held to account for that.
Brian Lehrer: Scott, thank you for all that. Stephen, any comment on any of it? Of course, you work for Georgia Public Broadcasting. I don't know if you want to say anything about the overall media environment in Georgia and if it's different from what he now living in California might experience or people living in the Northeast or anything like that.
Stephen Fowler: Well, we are the only true statewide outlet in Georgia. We have bureaus across the state. We have radio towers that transmit in just about every corner of the state. Obviously, public radio being radio has a little bit different focus on the type of stories that we do and how we're able to tell them and so I wouldn't disagree though that there are plenty of people in bubbles across the ideological spectrum that have different understandings, even just of these indictments based on what they listen to and how they listen to them because of how their media diet is.
I will say just with these indictments, for example, there are complex issues like Georgia's racketeering law, which is broader than federal law, different than federal law in some ways, but very complicated case in point. There are things called predicate acts which are crimes that contribute towards being hit with a racketeering charge and then there are also overt acts in furtherance of the conspiracy which aren't necessarily things that are illegal but help prove this conspiracy.
For some of these people that have been indicted, there are overt acts that they did that were things like calling lawmakers or reserving a meeting room to hold the alternate elector thing or tweets from Donald Trump saying, "Tune in to this hearing on One America News," that some people are taking in isolation and saying, "Oh, so it's illegal to tweet?" or "Oh, so it's illegal to make a phone call?" That's providing a distorted sense of what is actually at stake here.
On the other side of things, not to equivocate necessarily, but there are also people that are convinced that because of these indictments and because of this that by the end of this week Donald Trump is going to be in an orange jumpsuit in the county jail and he's never going to see sunlight ever again. I don't think that's healthy, but it's a reality of our ecosystem and why I feel strongly, at least, about the mission of public radio and radio that has a little bit more nuance, a little bit more context. Because so much relies on the voice and real people and talking to people in terms they can understand that hopefully, I think it has a better understanding. I guess quickly on the point about--
Brian Lehrer: By the way, you convinced me. I'm going to become a member but go ahead.
Stephen Fowler: [laughs] On the point about not having consequences for all the people that tried to object to the electoral college votes and things, I think it's easy to look back in hindsight and say, "How come nothing came of the Supreme Court challenge that failed or the electoral objection that failed or whatever." I think, especially as we talk about Georgia, the context of what happens afterwards is how people are being defined.
Some of the people that challenged the electoral results and then went on to try to challenge sitting elected officials in the primary, their consequences were getting blown out in primaries, and are now private citizens sitting at home and saying and doing whatever they feel like. Others were removed from committees or had less influential responsibilities moving forward and others maybe they're still in office, but their actions contributed to other people souring on other candidates and contributed to the Democrats winning in the Senate races because their views of the Republican Party and their actions tainted people that didn't overturn the election. It's hard to say people didn't suffer any consequences, but certainly, I understand where that mix comes from.
Brian Lehrer: I think a related question maybe from Julie in Hastings-on-Hudson, you're on WNYC. Hi, Julie.
Julie: Hi, Brian, thanks for taking my call. My question is about just the definition of swing states. I think a lot of people logically think, "Oh, that means there are a lot of swing voters in that state." I think of an organizer in Ohio who said, "There aren't really that many swing voters, there are swing states." I'm wondering in Georgia, how many-- it's just a ballpark on how many are. It's a swing state because they're evenly matched Republican and Democratic registries as opposed to how many are swing voters in the state.
Brian Lehrer: That's a great question, and it's a perennial question. I think you're right, a perennial misunderstanding. Certainly one of the things that we talk about a lot here in election season, in close elections, how much is it about turnout of those people from either party who you have to appeal to almost like in a primary, to make them passionate enough to turn out for you versus the people who are swing voters who sometimes vote Republicans sometimes vote Democrat who you have to appeal to in a very different way? Is there anything you can say about the numbers in Georgia or even Georgia in this regard relative to other states?
Stephen Fowler: Oh, absolutely. It's another one of my favorite topics. I think there are plenty of people that are reliable Republicans and reliable Democrats. If you look at it geographically, broadly, most of the rural parts of the state are reliably Republican areas, and most of the Democratic votes are in cities, and those are rural areas, but then in the Atlanta metro area. The reason Georgia is where it is, is because the population of Metro Atlanta now is roughly equal to the population of the entire rest of the state. It's going to be close margins for a while in truly competitive races.
There are two dynamics in Georgia that contribute to it being a swing state. One is there is a band of, let's say, like 100,000 or so persuadable voters in Atlanta's northern metro suburbs that vote Republican down ticket, but have voted say for Brian Kemp and Raphael Warnock in the midterm election, that are more moderate voters, that are not purely allied to one party or the other, that are the ones that make differences on the margins there.
The other thing to know is that within the rural areas, and within the Republican Party base, there are probably 50,000 to 100,000 or so people that were reliable Republican Party voters showed up and everything, but because of the false claims of fraud, and because of the skepticism engendered against the election equipment haven't shown up and voted.
I did a data analysis in the runoff in 2021 after the 2020 election and tracked the places that saw the highest drop in turnout were the rural parts of the state in Marjorie Taylor Greene's district and elsewhere in North Georgia, where they didn't vote in the runoff because they were told the election was stolen. That ended up contributing to the number of votes that Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock got over the incumbent Republican senators.
In Georgia, you have this double-edged sword of people that don't vote that used to and people that don't always vote the same way. The population and demographic and economic changes in the state that has truly made it reflective of America in a lot of ways, but has also truly made it where you can't put all your money on one party before election day and go to bed before results close and know what's going to happen.
Brian Lehrer: Leon in Columbus, Georgia, you're on WNYC. Hi, Leon.
Leon: Hey, good morning, Brian. Love your show. Thanks for taking my call. I've lived here in Columbus, Georgia since 1985, I'm a native New York I grew up in the Bronx. When I first moved here it was-
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Brian Lehrer: You acquired the accent by the way, I will note. [laughs]
Leon: People tease me about that, yes, I have, but I still identify with the Bronx. When I first moved here in '85 it was a blue state and then I witnessed it turn red and now it's kind of purple. The Democrats control Fulton County and the five counties around Fulton County and that's what contributed to the Senate victories and Biden win in the state. When you get outside of those counties in rural Georgia, it's Republican.
I drive around the state because of my job, and I see the 2024 Trump sign. When you talk to these people, and you ask them, "What's going on?" they just give you the talking points that Fox News and Trump provide. They can't give any concrete evidence as to the election actually being stolen. You're not going to change that. That's his base. The key to victory for Democrats in Georgia were the five counties that surround Fulton County, and that's just the way it's been since I've been here. I've held public office here in Columbus, Georgia, which is a Democratic County.
Outside of that, when you get out into rural areas like Stewart County, Coffee, those rural counties, it's Republican, and you're not going to change their minds. They have bought in hook line and sinker to the narrative, and they're not going to change.
Brian Lehrer: Leon, Thank you very much. Leon, former office holder, we don't know exactly how but with some political analysis that I don't think you disagree with. I think that was consistent with what you were saying before, Stephen. Yes?
Stephen Fowler: Yes. I think it goes to-- I grew up outside of Atlanta, I've lived in Georgia my entire life. I grew up just south of Atlanta, and the county that I grew up in by the time I graduated high school went from majority rural Republican farmland to upper middle class, Black Democratic suburbia. I think along with that, and along with working in radio, and along with traveling the state and getting outside of the Atlanta bubble and the metro bubble, a lot of people don't have a lot of experience with people and ideologies and cultures and backgrounds that are different than they are.
If you're living in Columbus, you probably spend more time in Alabama right next door than you would in Atlanta or other urban parts of the state. If you live in Atlanta, you probably don't spend a whole lot of time in rural Georgia, other than if you're driving to the mountains or somewhere else. I do think a lot of people don't understand how anybody could possibly think or act or feel differently than they do because they don't have those lived experiences and that shared sense of community.
I think that's why even though Georgia is kind of 50/50, urban, rural, 50/50, Democrat, Republican, you end up having these extremes within there because people just could not imagine a world in which Joe Biden is anything other than a criminal and people couldn't imagine a world in which Donald Trump is anything other than a criminal. It's one of those things where I think people don't understand what other people think and feel. I think the election is just one of those examples where, depending on who you are, and where you live, and who you talk to, you might have a completely different lens on the overall picture.
Brian Lehrer: Hey, before you go, Stephen, two big non-Trump issues for next year nationally are expected to be abortion rights, and the influx of asylum seekers. Abortion rights will presumably favor Democrats. Asylum seekers will presumably favor Republicans. Asylum seekers are a huge issue in places like New York and Texas now. How big would you say that issue is in Georgia?
Stephen Fowler: I would say even though people like "What border does Georgia have with Mexico or anything else?" It's a joke that people make. It still is an issue because Georgia is really the capital of the Sunbelt, and really part of the growing American economy in the south, and a lot of the industries in Georgia. Agriculture is Georgia's number one industry, and foreign workers are a key backbone in the agricultural industry. Also, Georgia is a growing player in the tech industry, and the green energy industry, and electric vehicles, and other things like that where the concept of international relations and the concept of asylum and immigration and things like that are what's part of Georgia's growing economy.
It definitely is something that I don't think many politicians have overtly discussed on either side of the aisle in the same way that you would get in Texas or other states where it's a more front-and-center issue, but it's this undercurrent in things. Same with abortion, too. Those swing voters that we talked about, both the ones that don't vote anymore that did and the ones that don't always vote the same, the concept of abortion is a motivating factor for some. Now that the Roe versus Wade has been overturned, there's not as much of a fervent fire to vote anymore for politicians to end it because they ended it. For those persuadable metropolitan voters, some of the laws in Georgia and in other states are further than they're willing to support. Making that a central part of their campaign platform could be another case where, well, I would rather support Joe Biden or insert a Democratic down-ballot person here because of their stance on this than if it was de-emphasized for something, say like the economy.
Brian Lehrer: Quick follow up and then we're out of time. Is Georgia getting many of the asylum seekers? Are there any battles over how to serve their basic needs, how to house them? Anything else like our front and center in New York right now?
Stephen Fowler: I would say that's not to the same degree as what you would see in New York and other states. A lot of the demographic growth in Georgia is not from asylum seekers, but multi-generational immigrant families that are a little bit more established and have come elsewhere and are coming to Georgia from other states and places. Certainly, there are pockets of Atlanta in its diverse suburbs where there are growing communities and because those communities are also controlled by Democrats usually and are a little bit more local-focused in scope and scale, and budget, it's not as pressing as some of the larger areas.
Brian Lehrer: I guess we'll see if the election is close next year. According to the polls of Governor Abbott from a few states west over there might start suddenly busing migrants to Atlanta. Who knows. Stephen Fowler, political reporter for Georgia Public Broadcasting and host of their podcast Battleground: Ballot Box. Stephen, we appreciated so much. Thank you.
Stephen Fowler: Thank you.
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