U.S. President Donald Trump boards Air Force One as he departs for a state visit to Britain, at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, U.S., September 16, 2025. REUTERS Kevin Lamarque
Republicans are dug in deep in most majority-white Southern state suburbs, and they’ve been that way since the 1990s. The GOP’s foxholes in their war against suburban Democrats around Atlanta are particularly deep, and if you can imagine a foxhole with air conditioning, fluffed bedding and a kitchenette you’ve probably got a good idea what Democrat have been up against for more than two decades.
But President Donald Trump appears to be changing that, reports the Atlanta Journal Constitution.
“Democrats have spent years chipping away at Republican dominance in Atlanta’s close-in suburbs. Now they’re targeting some of the toughest voters left to crack: Georgians who will vote Democratic at the top of the ticket but still back Republicans for the state Legislature,” report AJC.
Adam Cleveland, a lawyer challenging Republican state Rep. Scott Hilton, smells the wind change, and believes Trump’s staggering unpopularity is making it easier to attack entrenched GOP candidates on the issues, like Georgia’s 2019 anti-abortion law as an example of GOP “power run amok.”
“Our Republican colleagues lack the most important tool necessary for a fix,” Cleveland said. “The right tool for this job is a spine.”
Beth Fuller, who is running against GOP state Rep. Deborah Silcox, would not have stood as easy a chance of unseating the GOP incumbent in recent elections, but the unpopular face squinting out of the White House appears to be leaving an opening for her to also attack the other the issues, and be taken seriously.
Fuller, a former contractor for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, tells voters about losing her job amid Trump’s harsh federal cutbacks and watching the agency where she worked for a decade crumble under White House attacks.
“The Legislature right now are moving us backwards. It’s time to move forward and to do that, we have to vote Democratic,” she said.
The argument gets easier when the battlefront is the behavior of the increasingly unpopular state and federal party, rather than individual Republicans. In a Trump midterm, it’s easier “making a broader argument that if suburban voters oppose the Republican agenda, they should hold the incumbents responsible for keeping the GOP in power,” reports AJC.
“Their opponents are telling the world they’re moderates,” state Rep. Stacey Evans, D-Atlanta, said of the Republican incumbents. “I don’t believe that. They sure don’t act like it with their votes. They sure don’t act like it with their policies.”
Trump’s popularity is hitting record lows, to the point where analysts are wondering how much further Trump’s floor can crash beneath him. Mike Madrid is a former GOP strategist and political director for the California Republican Party, and a critic of Trump's takeover of the party, battered Trump’s numbers with podcaster Molly Jong-Fast.
Trump’s trade war with Canada and real war with Iran are hitting voters hard as the midterms fast approach. Based on the recent poll results from various sources, Jong-Fast argued that there is "no historical precedent for a president that's unpopular in modern [times]."
