If President Joe Biden wins reelection in November, it will likely be due to the unwavering support of people like Coretha Easterling.
For the past 21 years, the 76-year-old has lived at southwest Atlanta’s Barge Road Senior High Rise, where last Friday she and about 20 other Black elders helped kick off a routine political effort that could help determine whether Biden repeats his 2020 electoral victory in Georgia and thus nationally.
“I get seniors at all the high rises to do early voting, regular voting,” Easterling told Capital B Atlanta. “I’ve been doing this about seven years.”
Seniors for Biden-Harris is a nationwide grassroots effort to mobilize older Americans, especially those 65 and up, to turn out in huge numbers for the president in November. Easterling is a local leader of the campaign working to register voters living at retirement communities like hers.
The voter mobilization efforts of folks like Easterling are already proving more critical for Biden this election cycle. Studies show Americans are less enthusiastic about voting for Biden or Trump in their general election rematch. The Biden-Trump duo is the least liked pair of major party candidates in the last 30 years, according to the Pew Research Center.
Biden’s margin of victory over Trump during the 2020 election in Georgia was less than 12,000 votes. If there’s lower turnout this year due to less excitement about the candidates, more support from Black seniors could put Biden over the top.
That makes turning out older Black voters in left-leaning areas of the state like Fulton County even more crucial. Adding to that significance is the fact that many young, left-leaning voters have soured on Biden over issues like his support of Israel in the war in Gaza.
Some older voters are more concerned with kitchen-table issues.
Democrat-led efforts to increase the supply of affordable housing in Atlanta, protect Social Security, and increase access to health care services were reasons some Black seniors told Capital B ATL they support Biden.
Hearing Donald Trump’s name was like nails on a chalkboard for Sarah Frazier, 90, who winced and emphatically shook her head left and right after someone else mentioned the former president. Frazier later became emotional when discussing what the $35 cap on insulin — included in the Inflation Reduction Act that Biden signed into law in 2022 — meant for her 63-year-old daughter, Angela Johnson, who has diabetes.
“I am grateful for the president and for our mayor,” Frazier said.
Studies and polling data show older Black voters are more likely to vote and are much more likely to approve of Biden’s overall job performance than younger Black voters. That’s because Black seniors have established a tradition of identifying and voting as Democrats since the Civil Rights Movement, according to University of Georgia political science professor Gbemende Johnson.
“Whatever attachment there is to Biden, there is also an attachment and voting history for the party,” Johnson told Capital B Atlanta on Monday. “Younger voters, particularly younger Black voters, may be voting in their first or second election and are approaching this election without the same history of party attachment.”
Older Black folks have a clearer view of politics than younger Black voters, according to Morehouse College political science professor Adrienne Jones.
“They have a habit of seeing the world of politics in a way that makes it more difficult for them to be on the fence,” Jones said.
‘I’m gon’ vote’
Biden’s Gaza war policy may have dampened his relationship with college students in Atlanta and across the country, but so far it hasn’t cost him support from older Black voters like Victor Wills.
The 65-year-old Decatur resident and his wife, Dolores, 59, are longtime members of First Iconium Baptist Church in Atlanta and supporters of its pastor, Rev. Timothy McDonald, who has been demanding a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza since the Palestinian civilian death toll in the war began climbing in October.
McDonald and other Black clergy leaders who signed a November letter to Biden calling for a ceasefire have argued the president’s position on the war could cost him Black votes later this year.
“It’s going to be very hard to persuade our people to go back to the polls and vote for Biden,” McDonald told the New York Times in January.
Victor and Dolores Wills told Capital B Atlanta in February that they shared their pastor’s concerns about the war following a passionate sermon from McDonald on the topic, but not enough to skip voting for Biden in November.
Victor Wills and other Black seniors who spoke with Capital B Atlanta suggested younger voters don’t have the same level of experience in politics as their elders and don’t understand that for Black folks, presidential elections are always a choice between the lesser of two evils.
“The old Black vote is used to voting and I’m gon’ vote,” Victor Wills said at the time.
The same was true for Mujahid Abdullah Mukarram, 70, a Black Muslim who attends mosque at the Masjid Al-Bayyinah in College Park. Mukarram was one of several local Muslims who attended a March 5 press conference at the Masjid Al-Mu’minun in Peoplestown in support of the Leave It Blank campaign, a protest vote against Biden ahead of Georgia’s Democratic primary that aimed to pressure the president into supporting a ceasefire in Gaza.
Mukarram told Capital B Atlanta that he supports calls for a ceasefire in Gaza but still plans to vote for Biden if he and Trump are the major party candidates.
“I have a responsibility as a U.S. citizen to vote,” Mukarram said in March. “No matter what happens in Israel and Gaza, we’re still going to have leadership. … We have to come to a medium and see what would be the best position out of all positions as we look out at everything.”
