Georgia ‘critical’ to Biden reelection, new campaign memo reveals

ATLANTA, Ga. (Atlanta News First) - A newly released memo from President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign is stressing Georgia as “an extremely competitive state” in November’s 2024 general election.

The memo, sent early Tuesday morning from reelection campaign chair Julie Chavez Rodriguez, said the campaign “has made our earliest ever investment in paid media in Georgia and North Carolina, including a historic $25-million, 16-week TV ad campaign to reach general election voters across key battleground states last year and a six-week, $30-million spring ad buy that kicked off in March.”

Georgia, according to Rodriguez, was the closest state in the country won by Biden in 2020, and North Carolina was the closest state in the country won by Donald Trump.

Both Biden and Trump are the respective, presumptive Democratic and GOP nominees for president, setting the stage for an historic rematch of their 2020 campaigns.

“Georgia’s going to get a lot of attention, and deservedly so,” said Georgia State University professor Eric Segall. “Because it’s A, a swing state, and B, it was unbelievably close last time. And it has a lot of electoral college votes. So for all those reasons, it’s going to be the epicenter, I think, of national politics.”

November’s election will be the first presidential electoral rematch since 1956. In 1952, Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower defeated Illinois Gov. Adlai Stevenson after then-President Harry Truman chose not to run for a second full term. Four years later, Democrats again nominated Stevenson for the presidency, which led to a second defeat at then-President Eisenhower’s hands.

Among Republicans, no presidential candidate has ever been nominated for three consecutive elections; Grover Cleveland, a Democrat, was elected president in 1885 and served only one term before being elected to a second term four years later (1885-1889 and 1893-1897). President Franklin Delano Roosevelt holds the record for the most nominations: four.

A Marist Poll released last week shows Biden trailing Trump by about two-tenths of a percentage point in 2020, Trump now edges Biden by four points among Georgia registered voters in this year’s election.

“Georgia has been ground zero for Trump’s legal problems dating back to the 2020 election,” said Lee M. Miringoff, director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion. “Although the overwhelming majority of Democrats and a plurality of independents think Trump broke the law, only a handful of Republicans think so.”

Fulton County, a traditionally Democratic stronghold, will be a must-win for Biden in November, but his campaign is also branching out to message to voters in areas outside metro Atlanta.

“Because we have the resources — historical resources in fact — we’re going to compete across the state making sure we’re cutting our margins in those rural areas,” said Biden-Harris campaign official Kevin Munoz.

The margins were razor thin for Biden in 2020 — just under 12,000 votes.

“(Some) 12,000 votes or so out of the entire state is really a coin toss, so I understand why the Democrats are saying we have to win by more than that this time,” said Segall, noting the importance of Georgia’s sixteen Electoral College points in both Biden and Trump’s push to regain the White House. “From the Democratic Party’s perspective, they need a margin for victory that shows that this was a serious and decisive win and that’s going to be challenging.”

On Tuesday, Biden and Vice President Harris were in North Carolina. Rodriguez noted Biden has now visited every battleground state following his State of the Union speech. The campaign also noted Georgia U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock and Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens are working to reelect the 81-year-old Democratic incumbent.

Trump and several GOP allies remain under indictment in Fulton County, Georgia, where embattled District Attorney Fani Willis and her office are attempting to try them on charges of a criminal conspiracy to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results. That election saw Biden become the first Democrat to carry a deep Southern state in a presidential election since Bill Clinton’s victory in 1992.

Since early January, Willis has been facing allegations she misused taxpayer funds and crossed ethical boundaries during her romantic relationship with Nathan Wade, who she appointed as special prosecutor and with whom she had a romantic affair.

On March 15, 2024, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee said if Willis were to remain on the case, Wade would have to recuse himself. Hours after the ruling was issued, Wade resigned from the case, meaning Willis will continue prosecuting the case. Willis accepted Wade’s resignation, effective immediately.

Two weeks ago, McAfee also ruled six of the charges in the Trump’s indictment must be quashed, including three against Trump. But the order leaves intact many other charges in the indictment and McAfee wrote prosecutors could seek a new indictment on the charges he dismissed.

The six charges dismissed were related to soliciting elected officials to violate their oaths of office. That includes two charges related to the phone call Trump made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a fellow Republican, on Jan. 2, 2021.

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