Will Trump’s Georgia rally be a lifeline or an anchor for the GOP candidates he seeks to boost?

President Donald Trump is set to visit Dalton in northwest Georgia Friday to stump for Republican candidates as early voting is underway for the Nov. 3 midterm elections.

Trump visited Dalton in early 2021 at the end of his first term to drum up support for then-Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler in a runoff following the 2020 election that Trump lost. Perdue and Loeffler went on to lose the runoff to Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff after Trump claimed without evidence that the election system was rigged. Some Georgia Republicans at the time blamed those claims for driving down Republican turnout and helping Warnock and Ossoff clinch victory.

Trump’s next visit to Dalton is expected to include appearances from U.S. Senate candidate Mike Collins and gubernatorial candidate Rick Jackson. Whether it will help or hurt them in November remains an open question.

Friendly turf

Dalton is the county seat of Whitfield County, where Trump won nearly 72% of the vote in 2024 compared with just under 51% statewide.

Many voters there expressed excitement over the president’s visit.

“I think it’s cool that he values the opinion of people from small towns,” Dalton resident Sally Knox said in an interview. “We live in Nowhere, Northwest Georgia.”

Knox said regardless of what side of the aisle Trump is on, it is nice that a president thinks it’s worth visiting them and hearing them out.

The president has been barnstorming the country ahead of the pivotal election, calling on GOP voters to pretend he’s on the ballot.

Republicans say Trump has had a knack for bringing out conservative voters who would otherwise stay home on Election Day, but those low propensity voters are less enthusiastic about voting when his name is not on the ballot.

“I don’t think it’s going to hurt the Republican party’s chances. If anything it does good,” Tanner Maynor, chairman of the Northwest Georgia Young Republicans, said about Trump telling people to vote as if he was on the ticket. “A lot of people look to Trump and to his endorsement.”

Self-identified Republicans in Dalton said they would vote Republican regardless of Trump’s involvement.

“I would vote that way anyway. I’ve voted that way so far,” Dalton local Terry Ingle said in an interview.

Other Republicans on the statewide ballot expressed confidence in Trump’s ability to get conservatives to the polls.

“President Trump has an incredible ability to energize the base, and I think as Republicans, we need to make sure that the base shows up, and I can’t see anybody else who is more passionate about energizing the base than President Trump,” said Georgia Insurance and Fire Safety Commissioner John King, who is up for re-election this year.

State Sen. Brian Strickland, the Republican candidate for attorney general, who Trump endorsed in July, told reporters in Atlanta he thinks messaging will be more important than the messenger and said Republicans should stay focused on communicating how they plan to improve Georgians’ lives.

“Whether it be President Trump, Brian Kemp, whoever it is, or Brian Strickland talking to voters, we need to talk about the issues that matter to them,” he said.

State School Superintendent Richard Woods, a Republican up for re-election this year, struck a similar tone.

“Would I appreciate the president’s support? Sure. Anything that we’re doing to advance our kids,” he said. “But like I said, we have 1.8 million students in the state of Georgia. That has to remain our focus, and that means we have to bring everybody together. And I think that we’ve done a good job working across the aisle with all aspects of the political spectrum.”

‘A double-edged sword’

University of Georgia political communications professor David Clementson said a lot of people look to Trump’s endorsement as a red flag.

“Having these rallies and telling his supporters ‘Vote for Republicans as though I’m still on the ballot, imagine that I’m going to be on the ballot,’ that’s a double-edged sword,” he said. “It’s a double-edged sword because there’s no bigger motivator for Democrats to go vote for the Democrat than to imagine that Trump is on the ballot.”

A Civiqs poll finds Trump at 33% approval in Georgia, the lowest since his second term began.

Clementson said campaign staff for Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff and gubernatorial candidate Keisha Lance Bottoms will likely be eagerly watching the rally for soundbites to clip.

At a press conference in DeKalb County on the first day of early voting Tuesday, Bottoms and Warnock repeated Trump’s plea to Republican voters to vote as if he was on the ballot. Bottoms urged voters to “think about the policies that have come from the Trump White House and the man who didn’t even have the courage yesterday to stand on a podium and face the voters of this state and answer for those policies,” referring to Jackson’s absence from a debate organized by the Atlanta Press Club.

“People are intent on disrupting our democracy, but they have gone too far. So when Donald Trump says he wants people to imagine that he is on the ballot, I am asking the people of Georgia to do just that. Imagine that he is on the ballot,” Bottoms said.

Warnock pointed to tariffs the Trump administration pushed and high gas and diesel prices as a result of the war with Iran.

“Georgians should vote like Donald Trump is on the ballot. He is. His name is Rick Jackson. Rick Jackson is Donald Trump, and Donald Trump is Rick Jackson. And so, if you like these tariffs, which are really a tax on everyday items, then vote for Rick Jackson,” Warnock added.

DeKalb residents voting that day said they were voting accordingly.

“He is on the ballot through Rick Jackson. He is on the ballot,” said 79-year-old retiree Antoinette Bradley, who said that she is concerned that people with life-threatening conditions are not getting the healthcare they need because of Trump’s crackdown on Medicaid spending.

“I believe that’s wrong,” Bradley said. “Everyone should have healthcare, affordable healthcare, especially the poor.”

Deborah Martin, a 60-year-old who works in local government, said she was motivated to come out to vote on the first day of early voting because she’s tired of “the way this country is being run” by the Trump administration, saying that she is tired of today’s “divisiveness.”

“I felt like it was really important to come out on the first day in hopes that we have record turnout on the first day of early voting,” Martin said.

Melanie Taylor, a 72-year-old retiree, said that she’s tired of how Republicans on a local, state and federal level have been running government and wanted to vote early because this was her “chance to let them know that in a meaningful way.” When asked if she was voting as if Trump was on the ballot, it was an unequivocal yes.

“I’m definitely voting against his policies. I am tired of being embarrassed by the president of the United States, and I just don’t like the shift the United States has taken in terms of policies for immigration, to war, to the economy,” she said.

Georgia Recorder Editor-in-Chief Jill Nolin and reporter Maya Homan contributed to this report.