Jeremy Jones, a lifelong Republican in Georgia, has an unflinching assessment of Donald J. Trump: He describes the former president as a “cancer” harming his party, and Mr. Trump’s false claims of a stolen election in 2020 as “one of the worst things that happened to our country.”
Even so, in a state where next week’s election is widely expected to be decided by a microscopic margin, Mr. Trump has his vote.
“I fully recognize and appreciate the hypocrisy,” Mr. Jones, 50, said, adding that he had decided Mr. Trump was a stronger candidate than Vice President Kamala Harris. “I don’t think he’s best for the Republican Party, but that’s who we’re stuck with.”
As the candidates fight to the finish over Georgia’s 16 electoral votes, one of the more intriguing questions about the state’s closely divided electorate is how many Republicans like Mr. Jones, who harbor deep concerns about Mr. Trump, will reject him this time around.
The question applies to Republicans writ large, of course. But Mr. Trump has a particularly fraught history in Georgia. His efforts to overturn President Biden’s narrow win there in 2020 fractured the state Republican Party; all but ruined his relationship with the popular Republican governor, Brian Kemp; and led to the indictment of the former party chairman and a sitting Republican state senator, along with Mr. Trump and some of his other allies.
It is impossible to know how many Republicans in Georgia are through with Mr. Trump, but polling suggests they are scant: A New York Times/Siena College poll last month found that 97 percent of Republicans there were supporting Mr. Trump. The Times’s polling average suggests that Mr. Trump has a two-point lead over Ms. Harris in Georgia, a wider margin than in any other battleground state except Arizona.
In interviews, several Republican voters in the state who were disenchanted with Mr. Trump described balancing moral quandaries about him against their hopes for what he could achieve in a second term, and their own economic interests.
James F. Tucker, a lawyer for a state agency who lives in Dalton, said that he had voted for Mr. Trump twice — enthusiastically in 2016, and far less so in 2020.
Now, “I’m a Republican who is having to look at his options,” he said.
Eight years ago, Mr. Tucker thought Mr. Trump would bring business acumen and a straight-talking sensibility to Washington. Instead he saw a revolving door, as officials in the administration who he believed were capable rapidly cycled out.
Then, after the 2020 election, his skepticism increased after no evidence emerged to support Mr. Trump’s claims that victory, particularly in Georgia, had been stolen from him. “The election denial, the allegations of fraud — I waited for that to pan out and it never panned out,” Mr. Tucker said. “It was obvious it was all a lie.”
The Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol conclusively broke the spell, Mr. Tucker said. He will vote for Ms. Harris, his first time supporting a Democrat for president.
Mr. Jones, who lives in Ringgold, said he decided in the end that his worries about the policies that Ms. Harris might pursue as president overshadowed his contempt for Mr. Trump.
“I think it’s the lesser of two evils,” he said of choosing Mr. Trump, “which I know is a cop-out that people say in just about every election, but it’s the first time that I’ve truly believed it.”
Democrats have been trying hard to peel voters like Mr. Jones and Mr. Tucker away from Mr. Trump with a message of patriotism over party, delivered by high-profile disaffected Republicans like former Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming and a former Georgia lieutenant governor, Geoff Duncan.
In a recent essay in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Mr. Duncan, appealing to what he called “the whisper caucus” of anti-Trump Republicans, wrote that a second Trump administration would bring “more anger-filled chaos, division and selfishness that leads this country and my party toward the gutter.”
As recently as August, Mr. Trump was still needling Governor Kemp over his refusal to stop the certification of the 2020 election results. “Little Brian Kemp,” he said at a rally in Atlanta. “Bad guy.” Not long afterward, advisers to Mr. Trump brokered an uneasy truce.
At an event on Saturday, Mr. Kemp sought to shift attention toward issues like improving the economy, nurturing a business-friendly climate and supporting tax cuts. He did not mention Mr. Trump by name, saying only, “We need a change in command in the commander in chief.”
Still, Mr. Trump has remained the single most dominating force in Republican Party. Even as some longtime Republicans soured on him, he has energized a segment of Black and Latino voters in a rapidly diversifying state, like Dontè Thompson, 37, who grew up in Savannah surrounded by Democrats in his African American family.
“I know some people don’t like his direct messaging,” Mr. Thompson, the executive director of the Georgia Young Republicans, said. “But I like people who speak candidly.”
In some conservative parts of the state, those opposed to Mr. Trump have found themselves feeling isolated and sometimes outcast.
Mr. Jones had once been the secretary, vice chair and chair of the Catoosa County Republican Party, just below the Tennessee state line. He was invited to speak at Tea Party events. Being a proud Republican was central to his identity. But as Mr. Jones voiced his concerns about Mr. Trump, it led a close friend to question his loyalty to the party.
”It does make me feel lost,” he said.
Mr. Tucker, 57, said he did not recognize the party that had been so influential in his political awakening as a young man. He was captivated by a confident and positive vision of America and its place in the world.
Mr. Trump, he said, “talks about America like we’re the slimiest sewer in the dungeon.”
Pauline Stewart, a business manager for a call center who lives in Atlanta, said she hardly considered herself a Republican anymore. Ms. Stewart, 55, filled out a survey in the spring that she saw on Facebook, answering honestly about her misgivings with Mr. Trump. That led her to a national group called Republican Voters Against Trump.
She supported Mr. Trump vigorously in 2016, and nearly lost a friend who questioned her for it. In 2020, she did not bother to vote.
“I didn’t think he’s that dangerous — and I was wrong,” Ms. Stewart said. Referring to her friend, she added: “She was right. I was wrong. It took a couple of years, but I went back and told her.”
The post These Georgia Republicans Are Over Trump. Will They Vote for Him Anyway? appeared first on New York Times.
