Kamala Harris supporter Edie Jones was all smiles Tuesday night when asked how she felt the vice president performed in her debate against former President Donald Trump.
“She brought it,” Jones said of Harris. “She’s ready. She showed it tonight.”
Jones was one of about 50 Harris supporters who attended a Veterans for Harris/Walz debate watch party Tuesday night at the Studio Cigar Lounge in Fairburn. Fairburn City Council member Hattie Portis-Jones said she co-organized the event with Fairburn Mayor Mario Avery and state Rep. Derrick Johnson, D-Tyrone, in response to Trump’s nominee for vice president — U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio — and other conservatives questioning the military record of Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who served 24 years in the Army National Guard. The gathering was open to the public.
Attendees in the majority-Black, southwest Atlanta suburb were impressed and encouraged by Harris’ debate performance. All but one person who spoke with Capital B Atlanta said they felt she won the verbal sparring match with Trump, who angered and confused many with some of his comments, including allegations about Haitian immigrants eating people’s pets in Springfield, Ohio.
“He sounded like a senile, crazy person,” watch party attendee Sherese Watkins said. “Kamala, she was very calm. She made a point of what her plan is and her policy. Trump did not do that. Trump did not say anything. He kept going off, like, demeaning her. That’s not how you’re supposed to be a leader.”
Watch party attendee John, who declined to give his last name, said he felt the debate didn’t have a decisive winner. He wanted to hear Harris and Trump’s positions on allowing transgender kids to receive gender-affirming hormone therapy and surgery without their parents’ permission, a practice that is illegal in Georgia.
“I think it was 50-50,” John said. “There’s some questions that both of them did not answer. And I think this big topic right here has to do with the children having the rights over the parents [to transition].”
Remarks on housing
During the debate, Harris talked about America’s national housing shortage and mentioned her plan to provide $25,000 in down-payment assistance for working families looking to buy their first home.
“We know that we have a shortage of homes and housing, and the cost of housing is too expensive for far too many people,” Harris said.
It was music to the ears of Watkins, 33, a Fairburn resident who’s been living with her mom while saving money to buy her first home.
“If Kamala [does] that, it could help me out,” she said.
Portis-Jones, the city council member, said lack of affordable housing is a major problem in Fairburn, where about 76% of residents are Black and more than 23% of people live below the poverty line.
Average rent prices in Fairburn have declined slightly since 2021, according to RentCafe. But Portis-Jones said the price of homes has increased “tenfold” since she moved to the city nearly three decades ago.
“It’s amazing to me, as an almost 30-year resident of this community, the price of housing today,” she said. “We’re seeing an increase in [homelessness]. It’s happening all over the country.”
Addressing Project 2025
Polls show Harris already enjoyed overwhelming support from Black Americans, who are highly motivated to vote against Trump amid fears of him implementing Project 2025 and ending American democracy as we know it.
During the debate, Harris repeatedly took Trump to task over The Heritage Foundation’s conservative political playbook for a second Trump term and his past comments about becoming a dictator, weaponizing the U.S. Justice Department to target his political enemies, and centralizing more government authority at the White House.
“It is well known that he admires dictators [and] wants to be a dictator on day one, according to himself,” Harris said of Trump during the debate.
Trump once again denied plans to enact Project 2025, even though a number of his administration’s former staffers co-authored it.
“I have nothing to do with Project 2025,” Trump said during the debate. “I haven’t read it. I don’t want to read it, purposely. I’m not going to read it. This was a group of people that got together, they came up with some ideas. I guess some good, some bad. But it makes no difference.”
How will the debate affect the race in Georgia?
The last presidential debate between Trump and President Joe Biden led to Biden dropping out of the race. Roslyn Satchel, CEO of the New Georgia Project Action Fund, said Harris was the clear winner of last night’s debate, but she cautioned against Harris supporters becoming complacent about her winning in November.
A New York Times/Siena College poll unveiled Tuesday shows the momentum Harris built up upon entering the race has slowed, and Trump is ahead three points nationally. Trump and Harris remain virtually tied in Georgia, which Biden won by a razor-thin margin of less than 12,000 votes nearly four years ago.
Satchel warned that alleged voter suppression by pro-Trump election board operatives could play a decisive role in the outcome in November.
“We recognize that surely this perhaps may be a close race, but it will probably be most close because we are looking at some very venomous voter suppression techniques that are happening at the county level and at the state level,” Satchel said. “We should care less about the polls and be more observant of what’s happening with these governing bodies that have the potential of actually excluding people who’ve been voting for 30, 40, 50 years, who are being purged from the roles.”
Watch party participant Pamela Morris, 62, said she doesn’t think Trump’s debate performance won over anyone who wasn’t already planning to vote for him.
“I just don’t think he was able to pull [people] over to his side,” said Morris, who lives in Union City. “I think Vice President Harris did an exceptional job in saying basically what she intends to do for the United States and for the American people.”
Voter engagement activists are encouraging Georgians to check their voter registration status often to make sure they haven’t been kicked off the state’s voter rolls and to participate in early voting so they’ll have time to correct any problems they encounter prior to Election Day on Nov. 5.
The deadline to register to vote in the November election is Oct. 7. Early voting begins on Oct. 15 and ends on Nov. 1.
