SANDY SPRINGS, Georgia — Rusty Paul, the Republican mayor of Sandy Springs, a thriving suburb bordering the North Atlanta city limits, attributed Georgia’s purple to one man: Donald Trump.
Eliminate the former president’s influence, he said, and Georgia, which reelected a Democratic senator, Raphael Warnock, on Tuesday, will return to the red.
Sure, he said, Sandy Springs is changing. Once almost entirely affluent and almost entirely white, the community has become more ethnically, racially, and economically diverse. Apartment complexes have sprung up along Roswell Road, and businesses have popped up, bringing workers from overseas or from downtown Atlanta to a neighborhood that’s no longer just a neighborhood. Young voters are also moving to the suburb, which was once the epitome of the uncool in the sprawling metropolis.
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But, said Paul, he easily wins over these newcomers. The man who turned the northern suburbs blue was Trump.
“All of these are factors,” Paul said in an interview about the changes at Sandy Springs. “But the biggest factor is Trumpism.”
Warnock defeated Trump’s handpicked nominee, retired soccer star Herschel Walker, in a Tuesday runoff, giving Democrats a 51-49 majority in the Senate next year — a triumph for Democrats, who managed to flip a seat in Pennsylvania, too by defeating one of them Trump’s selection. Walker’s loss will almost certainly result in a soul-searching for a Republican party deciding how firmly to commit to the former president, who announced another run for the White House back in 2024.
Paul pointed to the victories this election cycle of the former president’s Republican critics, Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, as a sign of Trump’s toxicity in Georgia.
“There’s a very strong Conservative pull in the northern suburbs – Cobb, North Fulton. If Trump isn’t engaged, they’ll still vote Republican,” he said, speaking of the northern edge of Atlanta’s Central District and Cobb County to the west. “But if they feel Trump’s influence, they will vote against him.”
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He pointed to the former president’s inability to select good talent and his exceptional ability to find hot issues like transgender rights and immigration that gather the grassroots but knock out the center.
“Social issues are what drive younger voters the most,” Paul said, “and they don’t see anything in the Republican Party that they’re comfortable with right now.”
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