He once renounced politics. Now this Georgian activist is trying to recruit people who rarely vote

Davante Jennings of the New Georgia Project says the primary rule of winning over a skeptical voter is consistency.

ATLANTA (AP) — Davante Jennings solid his first vote for Democrat Hillary Clinton within the 2016 presidential race. He believes that Republican Donald Trump’s election this yr turned him from an idealistic student right into a jaded cynic overnight.

Jennings moved away from a system that he felt ignored people like him, a young black man who grew up in Alabama with a political awareness but held no visible power. It took him almost six years to recognize this view as suicidal.

Now, at age 27, Jennings is not only looking forward to casting his second vote within the presidential election for Democratic President Joe Biden, but he is also fully committed to his role as an activist, a top advisor to the Georgia state legislator and a daily volunteer recruiting potential voters from side as a part of the nonprofit New Georgia Project.

“I thought: I’m not going to vote for this if it’s all rigged and doesn’t matter at all,” he said in an interview. “Now I can talk to people who have been defeated by the system and say, ‘I understand. Let’s talk about why this is important.”

Jennings’ path focuses attention on the tens of hundreds of thousands of Americans who political campaigns often call “low-propensity voters,” people who never vote or achieve this only occasionally generally elections. About 1 in 3 eligible Americans I didn’t vote in 2020. In 2016 it was more like 4 out of 10.

With presidential elections often decided by slim majorities in several states, these voters could determine whether Biden is re-elected or whether Trump completes his return to the White House. The Biden campaign has had a noticeable advantage in trying to reach such voters, but each campaigns, together with political motion groups across the spectrum, are aiming to construct a broad organizational reach to maximize support in the autumn.

“Running an actual campaign where people can feel like they see a part of themselves is incredibly important,” Roohi Rustum, Biden’s national organizing director, said in an interview.

Biden and Trump owe their election to these sporadic, disaffected voters who often feel unrepresented.

Inconsistent Democratic supporters are getting younger and way more likely to be non-white. They helped Biden win Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin in 2020, 4 years after Trump flipped them in his loss to Clinton, while also adding Georgia and Arizona to his slate.

To play this coalitionRustum already includes greater than 100 field offices, greater than 300 paid employees and, as of the tip of March, had conducted roughly 385,000 volunteer recruitment interviews. The campaign highlights Biden’s political achievements and believes Biden is winning over Trump as a more empathetic and stable figure. But the campaign is also prioritizing a network of volunteers who will make the case in their very own circles, especially in areas with lower turnout.

“No talking point is going to be as compelling as someone they know in their community,” Rustum said, adding that “it’s actually your pastor, your cousin, your neighbor.”

Jennings doesn’t work directly with the Biden campaign. But his role in Project New Georgia, launched a decade ago by Democratic powerhouse Stacey Abrams to increase Black turnout in Georgia, reflects the same philosophy.

He argued that voter concerns often cut across party and demographic lines to a greater extent than reflected within the national conversation. “There is not as much difference as people think between poor people and black people and poor people and white people,” he said. But the messenger still matters. “When someone looks like you and sounds like you, there is a certain basis of trust.”

Trump increased GOP support amongst white voters without college degrees, which in 2016 helped him flip several Rust Belt states that Democrat Barack Obama won twice in his White House races. Trump also wants to increase support amongst blacks and Latinos.

He has matched Biden in fundraising and organizing this cycle. He is within the early stages of adjusting the agenda on the Republican National Committee and preparing operations on the bottom. But Republicans say the essential attraction is Trump himself, making the meticulous organizing less essential to his overall appeal than the trial itself is for Biden.

“President Trump connects with people and their frustrations with the economy, borders and their values,” said Josh McKoon, chairman of the Georgia Republican Party. “That draws people to him.”

Jennings confirmed that there is something to this argument. He said some young, nonwhite voters are attracted to, or no less than intrigued by, Trump’s bombast against the very establishment powers they distrust — as are some white Trump supporters.

“Yes, they’re starting to think that they’ve been manipulated and lied to and taken advantage of by the Democrats, as if we were just going to vote for the Democrats,” Jennings said, echoing a few of Trump’s comments. “They’ll say, ‘At least we know what we’re dealing with with Trump.’ It’s not what I think, but I hear it sometimes.

Particularly in less affluent communities – metropolitan and rural – Jennings said his conversations mostly revolve around basic quality of life issues: a lack of quality employment opportunities, a dearth of grocery stores with fresh, affordable food and little access to medical care. Younger voters express frustration with the criminalization of marijuana. Older voters, he said, sometimes question Democrats’ emphasis on LGBTQ rights.

Jennings said the first rule of winning over a skeptical voter is consistency.

“We are knocking on doors with a single mother and three children. She’s stressed. We come in and say, “Hey, I would like you to make time, see, it is important.” Some people don’t want to hear about it. I understand that,” Jennings said.

“But if I knock on that door once and the door goes nowhere, well, a couple of days later I’ll come back again. And on the other hand. What he’s starting to do now is like, “Oh, you really care.” I told you no, and you continue to come back like you actually care. Because I do.”

Breaking through, he added, usually requires telling one’s own story and linking problems to the ballot box.

Jennings said his return to politics didn’t come until 2022, during a friendly conversation with another black man — older than him but still of working age — who couldn’t afford health insurance even with a job. Georgia is among Republican-controlled states that have not fully expanded Medicaid under Democrats’ 2010 federal law, the Affordable Care Act.

“I started to realize, hey, you’re nervous about the health care system. How to change the system? You have to have voices,” Jennings said.

Around the time U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock was seeking re-election as Georgia’s first black senator, Jennings received an invitation to a New Georgia Project event for black men. He went and soon volunteered, learning along the way how to let potential voters lead the discussion.

That doesn’t mean you have to talk about Biden, Trump or any other candidate first, or even at all, Jennings noted. After all, he skipped the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial race, when Abrams headlined the effort to become the first Black woman in American history for governor, and the 2020 cycle, when Biden narrowly won Georgia and the state sent Democrats Warnock and Jon Ossoff to the Senate.

“Obviously the president is important,” Jennings said. “But sometimes the president is not the one who can solve the problems that lie in front of you.”

Ranada Robinson, director of research at the New Georgia Project, praised volunteers like Jennings and said it showed why she insisted the group not use the “low-propensity voter” label. Instead, the group refers to “at-risk voters.”

She called the previous classification “the legacy of transactional politics” – the old system of political power that appears only during elections.

The new terminology, she said, is empowering: “We could be a more inclusive democracy if we acknowledge that perhaps, you recognize, the old techniques don’t work for everybody.”

!function(){var g=window;g.googletag=g.googletag||{},g.googletag.cmd=g.googletag.cmd||(),g.googletag.cmd.push(function(){ g.googletag.pubads().setTargeting(“film-recommended-film”,”true”)})}();

Featured Stories

Post He once renounced politics. Now this Georgian activist is trying to recruit people who rarely voted first at TheGrio.