April is tax season, and Zoindia Kennedy has been busy.
She is a tax and financial adviser in Clayton County. Beyond filing returns, Kennedy has played an important role since 1986 in explaining how presidential policies translate through voters’ wallets and influencing their decisions at polls.
“Being in the tax industry, people can learn a lot from us because we know the pulse of the country,” she said.
Just over four years ago, attention nationwide was fixed on Clayton as officials tabulated the results of the 2020 presidential election. About 12,000 votes separated then-President Donald Trump from clinching the lead in Georgia against challenger Joe Biden.
Credit: Ben Gray
Credit: Ben Gray
As election workers recounted votes and announced victory for Biden, local leaders and voting rights advocates credited Clayton voters, a population of about 300,000 mostly Black residents, for delivering the decisive votes to flip Georgia blue. Retaining that reputation this November, they said, will depend upon how many voters return for Biden’s reelection campaign against his same opponent.
Kennedy said the problem is there is a disconnect between what voters need and how elected officials, including Biden, are communicating with them.
“They don’t know what his policies are, but that’s where I come in,” she said.
For example, for clients who have children, Kennedy shares what kinds of rebates they can qualify for. “The ones who have electric vehicles, you’re getting a credit,” she said.
In nearly every election cycle, Clayton has been a Democratic stronghold, voting by nearly 85% for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and about that same rate for Barack Obama in 2012.
What made Clayton stand out in 2020 was the amount of voters who flooded the polls. More than 95,000 people showed up to cast a ballot, an increase in turnout of more than 19,000 people from the 2016 election. The vast majority of those votes went toward Biden.
“We’re anticipating the vote coming out of Clayton being a powerful one yet again,” state Rep. Yasmin Neal said.
The Biden reelection team is interested in opening an office in the county, Jonesboro Mayor Donya Sartor said.
But in order to drum up enthusiasm for Biden, the campaign strategy needs to change with the times, said Deborah Scott, CEO of Georgia Stand-Up, an organization that promotes affordable housing, transit access and health equity for Black and working-class communities.
“We can’t tell people in the community to go out and vote and to participate in their civic life if they don’t understand what they get from it,” she said. “These need to be real wins that people feel in their community, in their pocketbook and at their kitchen table.”
Credit: Ben Gray
Credit: Ben Gray
Locally, Kennedy believes tax dollars “are being spent on a lot of frivolous things.”
“I’m just so disappointed in Clayton County,” she said. “Our government, our schools, our law enforcement. They think you’re supposed to throw money at stuff and it will just work out on its own. When I look at our roads, our tax dollars are not going to where they can help us.”
Credit: JOHN SPINK / AJC
Credit: JOHN SPINK / AJC
Pat Pullar, who has served on the Clayton Board of Elections, said residents “feel like our local government has become dysfunctional.”
The classic example of Clayton’s broken politics is former Sheriff Victor Hill.
Hill shot a woman in 2015, later pleading no contest to a charge of reckless conduct, and in 2018 he had a former deputy who planned to run against him arrested. Upon his recent release from an Arkansas prison after serving time for civil rights violations, Hill slammed the man he helped elect to office after him — his godson.
Credit: Courtesy Roman United / Jason Getz
Credit: Courtesy Roman United / Jason Getz
Meanwhile, a mixed-use development proposal for luxury high-rise apartments and an amphitheater that never came to fruition left residents feeling “hoodwinked,” Pullar said.
“There have been a lot of musical chairs,” she said. Now, voters are “actually doing some due diligence on these candidates. I’m pleasantly surprised.”
Neal said she plans to examine what she can do to encourage voters to come out in November “because of how important it is.”
But those goals will take effort. On a Monday in April, a woman at the Lee Street Park in Jonesboro, who declined to share her name, watched as her child played on the swing set.
“This election is not even on my mind right now,” she said.
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