It’s Tuesday, the traditional day for elections and for our pause-and-consider newsletter on politics and policy.

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Campaign signage for the leading presidential candidates seen in Atlanta. Photo by Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP via Getty Images

It’s Tuesday, the traditional day for elections and for our pause-and-consider newsletter on politics and policy. We think of it as a mini-magazine in your inbox.

A (SUNNY) POSTCARD FROM GEORGIA
By Lisa Desjardins, @LisaDNews ([link removed])
Correspondent

Hello, friends!

We are in Savannah, a sun-kissed city shaded by protected oaks and Spanish moss. It is a place of squares and porches, where people are friendly and the style is not flashy.

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Some sun-kissed scenes of downtown Savannah. Photos by Lisa Desjardins/PBS News

The city has long been the smaller sibling to the highway-ringed city of Atlanta. The last time anyone we spoke with remembers a presidential ticket visiting the Lowcountry around Savannah, the candidate was Dan Quayle ([link removed]) .

Now, the two major presidential campaigns are paying attention. Vice President Kamala Harris ([link removed]) , her husband Doug Emhoff ([link removed]) and former President Donald Trump ([link removed]) have all been here.

Here are a few things to know that may inform why:
* Location, location, location. More people are flocking to Savannah ([link removed]) , according to the U.S. Census Bureau, making the city one of the fastest growing parts of Georgia. One county in particular — Bryan County, which is located southwest of Savannah — is one of the fastest-growing counties in the country. ([link removed])
* It is a politically mixed area. Chatham (home to Savannah) and Liberty Counties have the largest numbers of voters and are deep blue; President Joe Biden won both by double digits. ([link removed]) Around those are three other counties — Long, Bryan and Effingham — that while smaller in voters are deep red. Trump won them by massive margins, but since 2020, more progressive voters are moving in.
* In short, Harris needs to run up the totals here to win the state, where latest polling shows Trump with a slight lead. ([link removed])

Now, to the people we’ve met and what we’ve learned:
* It is close. Supporters of both candidates recognize the stakes in this race.
* Democrats are motivated. Kristy Edenfield, a former Republican who became a Democrat during Trump’s 2016 run (“I just couldn’t support him”), attended both candidates’ rallies. She said the people who participated in those events “were equally enthusiastic, but for different reasons,” and that Democrats here can’t pat themselves on the back for being in blue counties if they don’t win the state.
* The stakes are deeply felt. Multiple Black women voting for Harris told us they were fearful of what would happen if Trump won. We met them and dozens of others as they made an impromptu decision to join Harris supporters waving and giving out signs near an early voting station. They said they are fearful for their personal safety and that of their loved ones.
* Republicans are motivated too. Leslie Evans opened up a Trump store in Liberty County this spring. And she has another further south, in the city of Valdosta. Though Liberty is a smaller, majority Democratic county, she said she gets dozens of customers every day. What’s at stake for her in the election? Evans said part of it is the economy. ([link removed]) In addition to managing two Trump stores, she also works as a truck driver and concert production staff.

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A view inside Leslie Evans’ Trump store. Photo by Lisa Desjardins/PBS News
* Everybody feels passionately. Chris Benton is a dad who travels for work and has felt a major financial pinch in the past two years. He is not a college graduate and told us he knows people on the left who “look down on people like me who don't didn't go to college … It's all, ‘What are you doing with your life?’ and this and that. You don't get that from Trump.”
* There are reluctant Trump voters. We spoke with Eric Johnson, a Republican former state senator backing Trump out of the hope he will be a less chaotic, more focused president this time around. Johnson was a Nikki Haley supporter. When we asked him, “Do you think Trump has ever changed?”, he told us, “No, but I can hope.”
* There are reluctant Harris voters too. Andrew L. Smith is a Black farmer who lives in Liberty County. He does not feel the Biden-Harris administration has kept its promises to him and others who have seen generations of discrimination. He is voting for Harris, but is not excited.
* A wild card. Kathryn Bauer, a Georgia Southern University senior, is firmly on the left. And she is voting for Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate. She said neither Trump nor Harris align with her beliefs, citing in particular her opposition to America’s support of Israel’s war in Gaza. She called it a choice between “a warmonger and a criminal.” I asked her if she worries her vote for Stein could end up helping Trump. She rejected that notion, saying, “If the Democrats wanted me to vote for their candidate, then they should have put a candidate forward that I want to vote for.”
* There are many motivations. We met a Black woman who is a waitress at a tourist hot spot. She was likely voting for Trump because he wants to end taxes on tips. When we told her Harris does as well ([link removed]) , she responded, “I didn’t know that!” indicating she may rethink her vote.
* The ground game will matter. Both campaigns have operations here. With both sides highly motivated, this will be a contest decided by inches.


This is all to say, as the sun sets on the 2024 election and when Georgia has some of the night’s earliest returns, look not just at Atlanta, but also at the coast.

If Harris can win Chatham and Liberty Counties by 15 to 20 points, and whittle down Trump’s margins in Bryan, Effingham and Long Counties, she could win the state.

One thing is for certain: We highly recommend visiting Savannah in October.

With love,
Lisa and the politics team
More on politics from our coverage:
* Watch: Harris campaigns with Liz Cheney ([link removed]) as Trump again deploys dark and anti-immigrant rhetoric.
* One Big Question: Two weeks out, how are the candidates reaching out to voters? NPR’s Tamara Keith and Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter discuss. ([link removed])
* A Closer Look: What’s behind a recent rise in executions ([link removed]) in America after years of decline.
* Perspectives: Brooks and Capehart on the key moments in the 2024 race ([link removed]) as we inch closer to Election Day.

IN ARIZONA, FEARS ABOUT A ‘DOOM LOOP’ OF ELECTION MISINFORMATION
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Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
By Shrai Popat, @shraipopat ([link removed])
White House Producer

Maybe it’ll all come down to Arizona.

The Sun Belt state is one of the key battlegrounds that could decide the 2024 election in such a closely contested presidential race. ([link removed])

Arizona was also ground-zero for election denialism in 2020.

That’s top of mind for Stephen Richer, the recorder of Arizona’s largest county. He runs mail-in voting and maintains voter registration, and is prepared to process and count an expected 2 million absentee ballots.

He’s also bracing for the backlash.

Four years ago, Richer and his office faced an onslaught of false claims — led by former President Donald Trump — that Arizona’s handling of the 2020 election had been compromised. These falsehoods continue today.

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Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer speaks at a 2022 news conference in Phoenix. Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

Richer said he and other election officials spend lots of time each day responding to allegations based on these falsehoods. Despite his efforts to restore faith in the election system, he feels a lot of it has been in vain.

“We seem to be caught in a bit of a doom loop where politicians feed these lies to voters,” he told PBS News’ White House correspondent Laura Barrón-López. “And so then it creates a feedback loop to politicians incentivizing them to keep doing it.”

Trump has also turned to amplifying a different conspiracy theory of late. Though cases of noncitizens actually voting are extremely rare ([link removed]) , Trump and other allies have raised the possibility of this group influencing the election.

In his time as a recorder, Richer hasn’t found a single noncitizen who’s casted a ballot.

Arizona, too, has “a lot of safeguards to ensure that that doesn't happen on any sort of significant scale,” he added.

PBS News will have more on air this week from Richer as it looks at the toll the election-year conspiracy theories have taken on election officials.
More on the battleground states from our coverage:
* Watch: Arizona Republicans explain why they’re considering voting Democratic this year. ([link removed])
* One Top Issue: How abortion measures on Nevada and Arizona ballots could help tip the presidential race. ([link removed])
* Another Keystone: Why Pennsylvania may be the key to the White House. ([link removed])
* From the Frontlines: Election officials speak out on the violent threats ([link removed]) and stress they’ve faced since the 2020 race.

#POLITICSTRIVIA
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Photo by Brian Snyder/Reuters
By Joshua Barajas, @Josh_Barrage ([link removed])
Senior Editor, Digital

Donald Trump’s short-lived stint ([link removed]) at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s this past weekend was in service of a repeated claim about his opponent. He’s gone after Vice President Kamala Harris for her experience working at the Golden Arches in college, claiming without evidence that she is lying about the job.

Harris has made her time at McDonald’s a go-to detail ([link removed]) in her story to voters, referencing her experience prepping fries in campaign speeches, TV appearances and ads. ([link removed])

Other U.S. presidents have held summer or first-time jobs on their ways to the Oval Office. Barack Obama spoke of scooping ice cream ([link removed]) at Baskin-Robbins. Ulysses S. Grant trained horses. ([link removed])

Our question: Which U.S. president once worked briefly as a chicken plucker?

Send your answers to [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) or tweet using #PoliticsTrivia. The first correct answers will earn a shout-out next week.

Last week, we asked: Who was the first U.S. president to install solar panels on the White House?

The answer: Jimmy Carter. ([link removed]) The longtime champion of green issues ([link removed]) installed the panels atop the White House about 45 years ago. (Here’s his dedication speech ([link removed]) in front of the reflecting panels on a sunny day.) As some readers have pointed out in their emails, President Ronald Reagan would tear down the panels seven years later.

Congratulations to our winners: Carol Rutz and Jessica Schreiber!

Thank you all for reading and watching. We’ll drop into your inbox next week.
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