Are Atlanta’s Black Seniors President Biden’s Secret Weapon? – Capital B News

If President Joe Biden wins re-election in November, it will likely be thanks to the unwavering support of people like Coretha Easterling.

For the past 21 years, the 76-year-old has lived at Barge Road Senior High Rise in southwest Atlanta, where last Friday she and about 20 other black seniors helped launch a political effort routine that could help determine whether Biden will repeat his 2020 electoral victory in Georgia and therefore nationally.

“I’m asking seniors in every high-rise to vote early and vote regularly,” Easterling told Capital B Atlanta. “I’ve been doing this for about seven years.”

Seniors for Biden-Harris is a nationwide grassroots effort to mobilize older Americans, particularly those 65 and older, to turn out in large numbers for the presidential election in November. Easterling is a local campaign leader working to register voters living in retirement communities like hers.

Voter mobilization efforts from people 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 favored pair of major party candidates over the past 30 years, according to the Pew Research Center.

Biden’s margin of victory over Trump in the 2020 election in Georgia was less than 12,000 votes. If turnout is lower this year due to less enthusiasm for the candidates, increased support from black seniors could propel Biden to the top.

That makes it even more crucial to turn out older black voters in left-leaning areas of the state like Fulton County. Adding to this significance is the fact that many young left-leaning voters have soured on Biden on issues such as his support for Israel in the Gaza war.

Some older voters are more concerned about cooking issues.

Democratic-led efforts to increase the supply of affordable housing in Atlanta, protect Social Security and increase access to health services are why some Black seniors told Capital B ATL they support Biden .

Hearing Donald Trump’s name was like nails on a chalkboard for 90-year-old Sarah Frazier, who grimaced and shook her head emphatically after someone else mentioned the former president. Frazier then became emotional while discussing what the $35 cap on insulin — included in the inflation reduction law Biden signed into law in 2022 — meant for her 63-year-old daughter, Angela Johnson, who suffers from diabetes.

“I’m grateful to the president and to our mayor,” Frazier said.

Studies and polls show that older Black voters are more likely to vote and 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 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 will enter this election without the same history of party attachment.

Older blacks have a clearer view of politics than younger black voters, according to Adrienne Jones, a political science professor at Morehouse College.

“They’re used to seeing the political world in a way that makes it harder for them to be on the fence,” Jones said.

‘I’m going to vote’

Biden’s war policy in Gaza may have dampened his relationship with students in Atlanta and across the country, but so far it hasn’t cost him the support of 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, the Rev. Timothy McDonald, who has called for a cease-fire humanitarian fire in Gaza since the attack on Palestinian civilians. The number of deaths during the war began to rise in October.

McDonald and other black clergy leaders who signed a November letter to Biden calling for a ceasefire have argued that the president’s stance on the war could cost him black votes later this year.

“It’s going to be very difficult 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 an impassioned sermon by McDonald on the subject, but not enough to not vote for Biden in November.

Victor Wills and other older Black people who spoke with Capital B Atlanta suggested that younger voters do not have the same level of political experience as their elders and do not understand that for Black people, presidential elections are always a choice between the lesser of the two. pains.

“The old black vote is used to voting and I’m going to vote,” Victor Wills said at the time.

So is Mujahid Abdullah Mukarram, 70, a black Muslim who attends the Masjid Al-Bayyinah mosque in College Park. Mukarram was one of several local Muslims who attended a March 5 press conference at the Al-Mu’minun Mosque in Peoplestown in support of the Leave It Blank campaign, a protest vote against Biden ahead of the Democratic primaries in Georgia which aimed to pressure the president to support 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 party’s primary candidates.

“As an American citizen, I have a responsibility to vote,” Mukarram said in March. “No matter what happens in Israel and Gaza, we will always have leadership. …We have to come to a medium and see what would be the best position among all the positions by looking at everything.