He once swore off politics. Now this Georgia activist is trying to recruit people who rarely vote

ATLANTA– Davante Jennings cast his first vote for Democrat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential race. The election of Republican Donald Trump that year, he says, turned him from an idealistic student into a jaded cynic overnight.

Jennings walked away from a system he believed ignored people like himself: a young black man who grew up politically aware in Alabama but wielded no apparent power. It took him almost six years to see that view as self-defeating.

Now, at 27, Jennings is not only eager to cast his second presidential vote for Democratic President Joe Biden, but he is also fully committed as an activist, top aide to a Georgia state lawmaker and regular volunteer helping potential voters get out. the sidelines recruit. as part of the nonprofit New Georgia Project.

“I was like, I’m not voting for this if it’s all rigged and doesn’t even matter,” 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 highlights the tens of millions of Americans often referred to in political campaigns as “low-propensity voters,” people who never or only occasionally vote in general elections. About 1 in 3 eligible Americans did not vote in 2020. In 2016 this was previously 4 in 10.

Because presidential elections are often decided by narrow margins in a few states, those voters could determine whether Biden is re-elected or whether Trump completes his comeback to the White House. Biden’s campaign has had a notable lead in reaching such voters, but both campaigns, along with political action groups across the spectrum, are aiming to build a broad organizing footprint to maximize support in the fall.

“It’s so critical to have an actual campaign where people can feel like they’re seeing a part of themselves,” Roohi Rustum, Biden’s national organizing director, said in an interview.

Biden and Trump each owe their election to those sporadic, dissatisfied voters who often feel unrepresented.

The Democrats’ inconsistent supporters are younger and much more likely to be non-white. They helped Biden win Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin in 2020, four years after Trump flipped them in his defeat of Clinton, while adding Georgia and Arizona to his column.

To rebuild that coalition, Rustum’s efforts already include more than 100 field offices, more than 300 paid staffers and, through the end of March, approximately 385,000 recruitment calls to volunteers. The campaign emphasizes Biden’s policy achievements and believes Biden wins the comparison with Trump as the more empathetic, stable figure. But the campaign also prioritizes a network of volunteers to advocate for the cause within their own circles, especially in areas with lagging turnout.

“No topic of conversation 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 does not work directly for Biden’s campaign. But his role with the New Georgia Project, started a decade ago by Democratic power player Stacey Abrams to increase black turnout in Georgia, reflects a similar philosophy.

Voters’ concerns, he argued, often cross more party and demographic lines than the national conversation reflects. “There’s not as much difference as people think between poor and black and poor and white,” he said. But the messenger still matters. “If someone looks like you and looks like you, there is a certain basis of trust.”

Trump has expanded the Republican Party’s support among white voters without college degrees, helping him in 2016 flip several Rust Belt states that Democrat Barack Obama won twice in his White House races. Trump also wants to increase support among black and Latino men.

He has followed Biden in fundraising and organizing this cycle. He is in the early stages of reorganizing the Republican National Committee and setting up a field operation. But Republicans say the main draw is Trump himself, making organizing less important to his overall appeal than that process is for Biden.

“President Trump connects with people and their frustrations, about the economy, the border, about their values,” said Georgia Republican Chairman Josh McKoon. “That draws people to him.”

Jennings confirmed that there is something to that argument. Some young, nonwhite voters, he said, are attracted to or at least intrigued by Trump’s bombast against the same establishment powers they distrust — just as some white Trump supporters do.

“Yes, they’re starting to think they’ve been manipulated, lied to and abused on the Democratic side, as if we’re expected to vote for Democrats,” Jennings said, echoing part of Trump’s pitch. “They’ll say, ‘At least we know what we’re getting with Trump.’ That’s not what I think, but I hear that sometimes.”

Particularly in less affluent communities – both metropolitan and rural – Jennings says his conversations focus on basic quality of life issues: lack of quality employment, a shortage of grocery stores with fresh, affordable food and little access to medical care. Younger voters are expressing frustration over the criminalization of marijuana. Older voters, he said, sometimes question Democrats’ emphasis on LGBTQ rights.

Jennings said consistency is the first rule for winning over a skeptical non-voter.

“We knock on the door of a single mother with three children running around. She’s stressed. And we come in and say, ‘Hey, I want you to make time, see this is important.’ Some people don’t like hearing about it. I understand,” Jennings said.

“But if I knock on that door once and it doesn’t go anywhere, well, a few days later I come back again. And then again. What it’s starting to do now is, ‘Oh, you really care. I told you no and you keep coming back, like you really should care.” Because I do.”

Breaking through, he added, usually requires telling part of his own story and linking issues to the ballot box.

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

“I started to realize, hey, you’re angry about the health care system. How do you change the system? You have to have the votes, Jennings said.

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

That doesn’t mean you should talk about Biden or Trump or any other candidate first, or even at all, Jennings noted. After all, he skipped the 2018 Georgia governor’s race, when Abrams became a national headliner in her bid to become the first Black woman in U.S. history to become governor, and the 2020 cycle, when Biden narrowly won Georgia and the state sent the Democrats Warnock. and Jon Ossoff to the Senate.

“Of course the president is important,” Jennings said. “But sometimes the president is not the one who can solve the problems before your eyes.”

Ranada Robinson, research director at the New Georgia Project, praised volunteers like Jennings, saying he shows why she pushed the group not to use the label of “low propensity voter.” Instead, the group refers to “high opportunity voters.”

She called the former classification “a legacy of transactional politics,” the old system of political power that emerged only at election time.

The new terminology, she said, is empowering: “We can be a more inclusive democracy if we recognize that the old-fashioned techniques may not work for everyone.”