Lithonia native Nathaniel Williams doesn’t agree with everything Charlie Kirk has said online, but the self-described Black Republican recalled feeling “astonishment and sadness” on Sept. 10 when news of the conservative activist’s assassination went viral on social media.
Kirk’s Turning Point USA nonprofit has recruited throngs of young people to the conservative cause since its founding in 2012, but Williams said he wasn’t one of them.
“I don’t necessarily believe Charlie Kirk influenced my decision to become Republican, but I acknowledged that he had a huge platform,” the 25-year-old financial adviser told Capital B Atlanta. “I know plenty of Black conservatives who probably started out with Turning Point.”
Kirk and President Donald Trump have been credited with helping the GOP gain ground with Black voters following the president’s first successful White House run in 2016. Since then, Trump has received small, but noteworthy gains in support from Black voters nationally.
Georgia Republicans say they’re continuing to capitalize on that momentum this year, but not everyone agrees with that assertion. Black voters’ clear dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party doesn’t necessarily mean there’s growing affection for the Republicans.
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Last November, Williams was among the 11% of Black Georgians — and 16% of Black men in the state — who voted for Trump. He said he supports the president’s stances against diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs, his federal employee layoffs and Trump’s confrontational approach to foreign policy. He and other Black Republicans who recently spoke with Capital B Atlanta often rebuffed criticism of Trump by pointing to similar moves Democratic presidents and lawmakers have made.
“I think the bombing of the Iran nuclear sites was really strategic,” Williams said regarding the United States’ controversial assault on the Middle East nation in June. The strikes in support of Israel, America’s closest ally in the region, failed to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities, according to CNN and other reports.
Georgia Republicans see opportunity with Black voters
GOP leaders in Georgia say they’ve seen signs of increasing Black support for both Trump and their party this year, despite polling data suggesting the opposite.
Only 10% of Black Georgians who responded to a University of Georgia-Atlanta Journal-Constitution survey conducted in April — following the president’s first 100 days in office — said they thought the nation was headed in the right direction.
Yet Camilla Moore, chair of the Georgia Black Republican Council, a nonprofit created to help the party build inroads with Black voters, said her group has seen an influx of interest this year, largely fueled by young Black men.
Moore joined the Black Republican Council in 2000 and has been its leader since 2021. She said the group hosts events and sends pro-GOP messaging to its database of members, which included about 200,000 Black Georgians in November. This year, she estimates that list has grown by about 25%, citing data included in a report to the Republican National Committee.
That report, which was provided to Capital B Atlanta, identified more than 1 million Black independents, many of whom have moved to Georgia from other parts of the country in recent years, as potential GOP converts.
Moore, a former assistant city manager, said those who have signed up to receive emails from the GRBC aren’t necessarily looking to become registered Republicans.
“These are people that will come to an event and say that they’re open to voting for Republican candidates, and they classify themselves as independent,” Moore told Capital B Atlanta. “They’re not going to register as a Republican, and they’re not going to get caught up in primary voting, but they are [willing] to vote for Republican candidates.”
Not everyone agrees that Trump’s MAGA movement has been a boon to Black GOP recruitment.
GOP strategist Leo Smith served as minority voter engagement director for the RNC and the Georgia GOP from 2013 to 2016 in addition to being the state Republican Party’s adviser to the Georgia Black Republican Council. He said minority engagement in Georgia isn’t as big a priority for the state GOP and the Trump administration this year as it was before “Trump-ism” took hold in the Peach State.
“They don’t have a minority engagement role at the RNC,” Smith told Capital B Atlanta. “They don’t have one in the White House, and they don’t have one at the Georgia GOP.”
Increasing the party’s appeal to Black voters used to be one of Smith’s responsibilities, something he worked on with Republican leaders in years past, including current Georgia GOP chair Josh McKoon and previous chair David Shafer, when Shafer served as Senate Pro Tem in the state assembly.
Shafer was one of the state GOP officials who was indicted along with Trump in Georgia’s fake electors scandal in August 2023. He decided against pursuing a second term as party chair, and ultimately was succeeded by McKoon.
“He was a supporter of minority voter engagement; however, Trump requires a different type of loyalty, a loyalty that says, ‘Suspend your principles of conservatism,’” Smith said of Shafer. “The only commandment is, ‘Be loyal to Trump.’”
Smith said the Georgia Republican Party’s approach to minority engagement today is vastly different than it was more than a decade ago, following the election of the nation’s first Black president.
“Post Obama, their response wasn’t, ‘We should never have a Black president.’ They weren’t racist,” Smith said of his fellow Republicans. “What they said was, ‘We should do better in order to win.’ Fast-forward to today. … They’re now saying, ‘No. Engagement with people across differences is actually wrong. We should demonize them. We should attack them. We should objectify them as something less than human, and definitely less than American.’”
Moore disagreed with Smith’s characterization of the modern GOP.
Garrison Douglas, who now serves as a communication adviser on Kemp’s Georgians First Leadership Committee, was previously involved with Black outreach for the Republican National Committee in 2020.
He, too, acknowledged a change in approach to minority outreach under Trump’s second term.
“I think it just comes back down to the loudness,” Douglas said. “I don’t know if we’re seeing that same level of promotion of those efforts, but you are seeing growth in regards to organizations, like Turning Point, their Black American Coalition. You are seeing efforts within the state party continue to work in those areas, but I think it’s just not as [loud] anymore.”
Douglas agreed with Moore that many Black Georgians are open to voting Republican, but don’t necessarily want to be identified as members of the party.
“In the Black community, specifically, there is just that historical connotation that is associated with being a Black Republican,” he added. “It is difficult for them to go to a rally and wave a sign or being willing to pound the pavement and go door-to-door and say, ‘Yeah, we’ve got to get so-and-so in office.’”
Black men swinging to the right?
Moore’s report also identifies young Black men like Williams as one of the most malleable subsets of African American voters — especially young Black male entrepreneurs living in metro Atlanta, long considered the nation’s Black business capital.
“They have this sense of urgency to be independent, to be breadwinners, not only for themselves, but for their mothers,” Moore said. “I talk to a lot of young Black men, and they’re like, ‘You know what? I come from a single head of household. My mother has always been the breadwinner. I want to take that load off of her.’”
Austin Broughton, 30, said he became a registered Republican last year, when he voted for Trump for the third consecutive presidential election cycle. The Stone Mountain native and self-described “nationalist” is the host of the AustinOffScript conservative political podcast, which he said has seen rapidly increasing engagement on social media this year.
He said he didn’t believe Democrats or Republicans were serving the Black community well until Trump came along. It was Trump’s promise to “drain the swamp” that helped Broughton and others decide to join the MAGA Movement.
“I saw an evolution of the Republican Party that was inspiring,” Broughton said. “I think it’s happening because Black people are becoming what Malcolm X wanted us to become, which is politically mature enough to properly examine both Republican and Democratic parties and analyze who is doing the most for us, or at least allowing us to do the most for ourselves. Democratic policy has made a multitude of false promises to the Black community, yet has failed to deliver.”
Republican Cory Ruth, 48, is the CEO of Mergence Global, a management consulting firm, and has worked with various GOP leaders, including former Gov. Nathan Deal and presidential candidate Mitt Romney.
Ruth agreed with Moore and Douglas that identifying as Republican is a bridge too far for many Black folks, but that doesn’t mean they’re not willing to vote for GOP candidates.
“The messaging is, ‘This is what we believe,’ and Black people are becoming more open to that messaging,” Ruth told Capital B Atlanta. “Donald Trump is just saying what he believes, and more Blacks are open to it.”
What the shift could mean for Georgia
Even a marginal gain in Black support for Republican candidates could spell doom for Democrats’ hopes to win statewide office races in Georgia next year.
High Black voter turnout helped U.S. Sens. Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock become the first two Democrats to win U.S. Senate races in Georgia in decades.
Black turnout in 2024 failed to match the level it reached during the 2020 election cycle. Now Ossoff, who is up for reelection next year, has been identified as the most vulnerable Democratic U.S. Senate incumbent.
The long list of Democratic contenders vying to replace Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp includes former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, State Sen. Jason Esteves, State Rep. Derrick Jackson, former DeKalb County CEO Michael Thurmond, former Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, who officially switched parties in September, and state Rep. Ruwa Romman.
Whoever wins next year’s Democratic gubernatorial primary race will need to maximize Black voter turnout if they hope to defeat the winner of next year’s Republican primary contest, a list of candidates that includes Attorney General Chris Carr, current Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
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Winslow Jones, president of the Atlanta Young Republicans, said her group, which claims to be “the largest GOP-affiliated organization in Georgia,” has seen a growing presence of Black attendees at meetings and events it has organized.
“People have always said when they come to any of our meetings, they are pleasantly surprised about how diverse we are ethnically,” Jones told Capital B Atlanta. “It’s not true to say Republicans are all one race, but we really don’t focus on that so much as the emphasis that we are all bonded over common values as Americans.”
Jones declined to provide precise numbers, noting that her group doesn’t track racial demographic data. Recent social media posts from the group show a small number of Black attendees, including Williams, at some of their events.
There weren’t any Black attendees visible outside the latest Fulton County Republican Party annual members meeting at the Doubletree Hilton hotel in Roswell on Sept. 24.
Capital B Atlanta was denied entry to the members-only meeting. Stephanie Endres, who serves as chair of the party’s Fulton County division, couldn’t confirm whether there were any Black Republicans in attendance for the second annual meeting, but she said increasing diversity remains a priority.
Endres said local Republicans recently executed a text messaging campaign that mobilized Black locals against a proposed Fulton County property tax increase that may have adversely affected Black homeowners. The party is also pushing for greater accountability at the Fulton County Jail, the horrific conditions of which were the subject of a U.S. Justice Department investigation and resulting consent decree.
“We are driving engagement in the community more so than has ever been done before … getting out there and being part of the community to say we’re not going away,” Endres said.
Moore suggested younger Black Georgians she’s encountered, especially the men, are dissatisfied with the status quo in Georgia, Washington, D.C., and the Democratic Party. She said, unlike older Black Georgians born before, during and in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement, younger voters are more open to voting for GOP politicians even if they themselves don’t want to be identified as Republicans.
“At the end of the day, I think that’s the direction that our party should look towards that future in terms of the election of Republican candidates that best represent the interests of this group under 50 in the Black community,” she said.
