VIVIAN Childs, a staunch supporter of Donald Trump, schooled a roomful of Republicans on how to win over Black voters in the battleground state of Georgia.
Focus on Trump's economic policies, on illegal immigration and inflation, the Black Baptist minister told the gathered group of volunteers and campaign staff at the former president's newly opened office in the rural city of Valdosta last month.
Tell voters what Trump has done for them and that he will bring the change America needs, she exhorted. "We are the party of hope," she said. "We are the party of truth."
By Trump's own admission, Georgia has become a must-win state, one he thought he had locked up until Kamala Harris became his Democratic rival in July.
Opinion polls in Georgia show the candidates neck and neck, a huge turnaround from early July when polls showed Trump leading Democratic President Joe Biden by as many as six percentage points.
Georgia has the biggest proportion of Black voters in any of the seven battleground states that will decide the Nov. 5 presidential election.
Trump's goal of pulling in more Black support has not only been complicated by Harris' entry, but by Republican-backed voting restrictions that activists say are aimed at putting up barriers to people of colour - something the party denies.
Childs, part of the national "Black Americans for Trump" coalition of advocates, conceded the nomination of Harris initially changed the race in Georgia.
But she insisted that excitement was fading. Trump lost to Biden by fewer than 12,000 votes in the 2020 election.
A senior Trump campaign official said the team saw particular promise in attracting young Black men who he said have become disaffected with Democrats over high prices and see greater economic opportunities under the former president.
"It has gotten really intense in Georgia," said Essence Johnson, a Black woman who chairs the Democratic Party in Cobb County, a sprawling region outside of Atlanta.
Indeed, at the Pig and Peaches barbecue festival in Cobb County, battle lines were drawn.
The Democratic stall courted voters of colour with literature on student loan forgiveness, help for historically Black universities and lowering drug prices.
The Republican stall, a hundred yards away, was replete with Spanish-language leaflets and literature focused on inflation, abortion, economic opportunity and faith.
Cobb County illustrates the demographic changes that have transformed Georgia from a reliably Republican state into a battleground.
Once a predominately white, Republican county, it's now 30 per cent Black, 14 per cent Hispanic and 6 per cent Asian, an area that helped Biden win Georgia in 2020.
Before Biden dropped out, Trump's campaign was so confident of victory in Georgia that it had spent less than US$3 million on ad buys.
Since Harris' emergence, the campaign and an affiliated group responded by sinking more than US$30 million into advertising in the state, outspending the Harris campaign through the month of August.
Both sides have committed to spending more than US$37 million each in Georgia through Election Day, according to AdImpact, a firm that tracks political advertising.
Ads from the Trump campaign are mostly negative, attacking Harris for inflation, blaming her for people crossing the US-Mexico border illegally and accusing her of being a dangerous liberal.
In August and September 2019, while Trump was president, the Black unemployment rate reached a new low of 5.3 per cent. Under Biden, the rate fell even lower, to 4.8 per cent, in 2023.
Harris is running ads focused on proposals to lower drug prices, taxing large corporations and the ultra-wealthy to pay for housing, and tax breaks for working parents.
"Vice President Harris is fighting to lower costs for our families, protect our freedoms and make sure everyone in Georgia can not just get by, but get ahead," added Porsha White, the campaign's state director.
Trump took about 11 per cent of the Black vote in Georgia in the 2020 election, according to exit polls.
If he were to pull in any higher share in November, he could win the state, said Andra Gillespie, a political science professor at Emory University.
A poll conducted for CNN during the last week of August showed Harris with a one-percentage-point lead in the state, 48-47 per cent, with Trump getting 10 per cent of the Black vote.
* The writers are from Reuters