Harris’ Georgia challenge: reassembling Biden’s diverse 2020 coalition

Decatur, Georgia (CNN) — Step into the Rebel Teahouse and look to the right: a stack of Kamala Harris campaign brochures on the shelf gives away a big change here.

Owner Christine Nguyen has a candidate now and is not only excited to cast her vote but is also doing a little extra to help the vice president, including making a place for the brochures and plans to hold a voter registration event at the teahouse just before the Georgia deadline.

“I’m proud to say there is somebody who is able to, like, voice the things that we as a people have been shouting for, like, the past four years,” Nguyen said in a recent interview.

That’s a big shift from when we first met Nguyen back in April, when she told us she did not vote in 2020 because she felt no connection to either Joe Biden or Donald Trump. At the time, she said she was undecided about this year’s election and dreading the prospect of a Biden-Trump rematch.

Then came Biden’s late July decision to step aside and Harris’ quick emergence as the replacement Democratic nominee – which Nguyen and her partner greeted with disbelief and then excitement.

“You know, who would have thought the presidential candidate would drop out so close to the running?” she said. “And I think he and I were just really happy that we had – that we were now motivated to go to the polls and actually make our vote count.”

Nguyen is one of more than 70 voters participating in our “All Over The Map” project, an effort to track the 2024 election through the eyes and experiences of voters who live in key battlegrounds.

Rebel Teahouse is in Decatur, in reliably blue suburban DeKalb County just outside Atlanta. It is one of the places that helped Biden to his stunning, razor-thin 2020 Georgia win and is now a key test of whether Harris can assemble a similar winning coalition.

That formula begins with giant support – and turnout – among Black Americans. But other voters of color are also critical: In 2020, voters of color made up 39% of the Georgia presidential electorate, and Biden won 81% support of that vote. That lopsided margin helped Biden win the state, by fewer than 12,000 votes, even though Trump won 69% among White voters.

In a CNN poll released Tuesday, Harris was well ahead of Trump among Black (79% support) and Latino (59%) likely voters, but still trailed Biden’s winning percentages with those groups in 2020 – 87% and 65%, respectively.

A growing political force in Georgia’s suburban realignment

Nguyen is part of a growing political force in Georgia and several other battleground states: Asian Americans. Statewide, Asians constitute about 4.5% of Georgia’s population. In the metro Atlanta area, the number of residents of Asian descent has more than doubled in the past two decades.

“I feel like a lot of my AAPI community have come together to, I guess, you know, help increase awareness for voting, which is really refreshing,” Nguyen said, referring to Asian American and Pacific Islanders. “This time, it’s a lot stronger, especially having a candidate like Kamala.”

Harris is the daughter of immigrant parents; her mother came to the United States from India, her father from Jamaica. Nguyen’s immigrant parents are from Vietnam.

Nguyen hopes to open a second teahouse location and sees the Harris small-business plan as a potential source of help. Reproductive rights and the climate crisis are also top issues for Nguyen, who said there are more conversations about gun safety measures since a recent school shooting in Georgia.

She acknowledged a robust debate among fellow small-business owners about which candidate is best suited to handle the economy.

“That comes up very often,” she said. “I hear it a lot, even in my family of entrepreneurs, it comes up every now and then, right, that Trump just knows business better, that he’s, you know, more savvy. … But I think at the end of the day, it’s what you value and, like, what your beliefs are in terms of your ethics.”

Even as she voiced excitement about Harris, Nguyen was candid in acknowledging a political hurdle for the vice president: persistent inflation.

“It definitely has hurt our business in the past couple of months, seeing the prices go up for our supplies, and us not being able to adjust the prices accordingly,” Nguyen said. “I think that could highly impact her chances, because she has been part of the administration in the past four years.”

Here in DeKalb County, Trump won just 16% of the vote four years ago. Jan Gardner cast one of those votes and will back Trump for a third time this November. “Absolutely no,” was Gardner’s answer when we asked whether the switch from Biden to Harris would make him rethink. “We know what one individual has accomplished and what another’s lifetime mission represents.”

Suresh Sharma came to the United States from India 34 years ago. He has worked for NASA and General Electric and now runs his own business looking to support manufacturing startups.

“Strategically and long term, the economy is in a very good shape,” Sharma said in a recent interview.

Sharma, who calls himself a “classic independent,” said he voted for Trump in 2016 and for Biden in 2020. He lives in Marietta, in suburban Cobb County, a case study in America’s suburban political transformation.

Republican Mitt Romney won 56% of the vote in Cobb County in 2012. Trump narrowly lost the county in 2016, winning just 47%. Then in 2020, Trump’s share dropped to 42% and Biden matched Romney’s 2012 vote share – 56%.

Trump’s often toxic tone hurts him in the suburbs, but that is just part of the shift. Cobb and the other Atlanta suburbs are growing more diverse, and many big employers in metro Atlanta require at least four years of college – now the clearest dividing line in voting preference.

Sharma applies a three-part test to picking a president.

First is ability to govern. He said Harris is a blank slate here because she has no executive experience. And he grades Trump a failure for not keeping big promises like building a wall on the US-Mexico border (only a fraction of what Trump promised was done), replacing Obamacare and shrinking the national debt.

“You had four years,” he said of Trump. “That’s a long time. So I think that was to me, governance is not there.”

Second is the ability to manage large projects. Sharma said neither Trump nor Harris has done this.

The third part of his test is why Sharma is leaning Harris.

“To me, I think it’s very important to remember, president is a role model. It is very important. Remember the president is a role model,” he said. “I think it tips the scale. Who’s the role model, who epitomizes good, moral values? Can I tell my daughter and son, ‘Hey, be like this person’? … So in my view, I think the Republican Party should have done a better job of picking somebody who really reflects American values.”

Not sold on Harris

Chantá Villano-Willis also lives in Cobb County, in Powder Springs, in the county’s southwest corner. Powder Springs is majority Black. When Villano-Willis, who is Black, tells her mother she is undecided, things get tense.

“(She) never thought she’d see a Black person president in her life. She did,” Villano-Willis said. “Now, Kamala Harris is (running) for president. My mother says she doesn’t care what she does, let’s just get her in there. And I simply don’t feel the same.”

That is a big shift.

“I’ve been a Democrat my entire adult life,” she said. “This has actually been the first year where I was considering voting Republican.”

Villano-Willis raises complaints and conspiracies often heard in the MAGA media silo, including an unfounded allegation that Harris cheated in the debate with Trump.

“I don’t know how true it is, but I just recently saw something where her earrings were actually speakers, where maybe her campaign, her head people, her administration, was feeding her answers,” Willis-Villano said.

She said one advantage for Trump is that “he has done the job before,” and she also agrees when he calls for more domestic energy exploration and voices support for cryptocurrencies.

But she is with Harris on abortion rights and says Trump sometimes talks down to Black people.

“Oh, and his favorite color is black,” Villano-Willis said in a mocking tone. “Boy, please no. … We don’t have good choices, period.”

Kim Cavaliere is a Massachusetts native who has lived in Gwinnett County for 20 years and watched its dramatic political shift. Republican George W. Bush won 66% in Gwinnett in 2004; in 2020, Biden carried the county with 58%.

Cavaliere leans Democrat on most issues but is disillusioned with Washington and voted third party in both 2016 and 2020. She is equallty nonplussed so far this year, even after the Democratic switch.

Cavaliere agrees with Harris on abortion rights and scored her a clear winner in her debate with Trump. “But did she convince me she has what it takes? No,” Cavaliere said. “Right now, I am not settling and am not pleased with the choices.”

Fresh excitement about turning out

Entrepeneur Lakeysha Hallmon, on the other hand, is more than pleased – and hoping to help Harris meet her Georgia coalition challenge.

“There’s a sense of joy, a sense of excitement,” Hallmon said in an interview. “I think there has been a groundswell of support. … It doesn’t feel so doomsday anymore. It actually feels hopeful when there’s excitement.”

Yes, Hallmon said it was a giant source of pride to see a woman of color as a nominee for president. But she also said her conversations are focused on issues where she sees Harris as clearly superior to Trump, including with her grandmother.

“What she tells me, ‘I GOT to be able to afford my medicine,’’’ Hallmon said.

Hallmon spoke to us at Village Retail, which sells products curated from more than 30 Black-owned small businesses, most of them based in metro Atlanta. The shop is in the Ponce City Market, a former Sears warehouse in Atlanta’s Old Fourth Ward, the birthplace of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

Like Ngyuen, Hallmon sometimes finds herself in debates over whether Harris or Trump is better for small business and the overall economy. She is grateful for her business success, but uses those moments to make a point.

“It’s very important for us to get outside of our bubbles and know that if you live in a bubble of privilege, someone else doesn’t,” she said. “So how do we ensure that we’re voting for a candidate that’s not voting based on privilege, but it’s voting about people and making decisions that are going to impact people that does not have the privilege to be in an insulated bubble.”

Hallmon’s motto – “Support Is A Verb” – animates her efforts to expand Black economic opportunities. And her politics.

“‘Support is a verb’ tells people to do something,” she said. “If you love something, there should be action behind it. … That means, if it rains, get out and vote. That means if you have a car and your neighbor doesn’t have a car, take them to the polls with you. And I do believe that we’re going to see a great voter turnout.”

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