Jackson will skip this weekend’s Trump rally in Macon

Republican candidate for governor Rick Jackson will skip President Donald Trump’s upcoming rally in middle Georgia this weekend, opting instead to campaign in suburban Atlanta as the virtually tied race enters its final stretch.

The decision comes after Jackson on Friday joined Trump on stage at a rally in Dalton after taking part in a tele-rally with the president the previous Sunday. Now, Trump will head to Macon on Saturday for another push to turn out his  supporters for the midterms.

A Civiqs poll finds Trump at 33% approval in Georgia, the lowest since his second term began. A new poll from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution also shows that 55% of likely Georgia voters disapprove of Trump’s job performance.

Since Jackson won the GOP nomination in June, the Republican who once said he would be “Trump with a Southern tone” has sought to align himself more with Republican Gov. Brian Kemp. But a spokesperson with the Jackson campaign downplayed his absence from the upcoming Trump rally, framing it instead as a strategy to increase Republican voter turnout elsewhere in the state.

“Rick will be serving as a force multiplier and rallying Republicans in Cherokee County to turnout,” said spokesperson Garrison Douglas in a statement.

Jackson, a wealthy healthcare executive and a self-described political outsider, is running against Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms, the former mayor of Atlanta, in a race that’s rated a toss-up according to the Cook Political Report. And despite Jackson pulling ahead of Bottoms in recent polling by a couple percentage points, the race remains within the margin of error.

Bottoms’ campaign argued that the Trump-endorsed Republican nominee remains closely aligned with the president.

“Donald Trump is coming back to Georgia again in an attempt to elect his ‘great friend’ Rick Jackson, because Slick Rick Jackson would do whatever Donald Trump wants as governor,” said Tharon Johnson, campaign manager for the Bottoms campaign.

Kennesaw State University political science professor Jason Shepherd, who previously chaired the Cobb County Republican Party, said that despite the president’s low approval rating, Jackson’s absence doesn’t necessarily mean that the Republican nominee is trying to distance himself from Trump. Shepherd added that since Trump is already attempting to turn out voters in middle Georgia, it makes sense that Jackson will try to mobilize voters in another region.

“You have the president rallying Republicans to get out to vote in Macon. Rick Jackson needs to be rallying Republicans to get out the vote in someplace else, and other candidates as well. It’s all one team working together over a very big state,” Shepherd said.

And the Democratic Party of Georgia was quick to suggest Jackson’s campaign statement implies that he is still working closely with Trump, with spokesperson Jake Strickland saying that Jackson “will never be able to run away from his long record of fighting for Trump over what’s in the best interest of Georgia families.”

“It’s beyond clear that Slick Rick is a Trump-obsessed billionaire who will do anything to suck up to the president,” Strickland said.