The last time former President Donald Trump campaigned in Georgia, Republicans seemed as confident as ever about recapturing the state. He led President Joe Biden in just about every poll, the party was uniting behind him, and he boasted of “through the roof” Black support.

On Saturday, Trump returns for the first time since his June 27 debate with Biden to a race transformed by the president’s decision to end his reelection bid weeks after his abysmal performance in that Atlanta showdown.

Polls now show a tightening race between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, whose surging campaign days ago held a downtown Atlanta rally that drew roughly 10,000 attendees — the largest Democratic crowd yet this campaign cycle.

And Republicans who once felt assured of recapturing Georgia are now girding for a tough fight as Harris energizes younger and Black voters while hoping to appeal to suburban swing voters who had seemingly soured on Biden.

“Georgia is definitely back in play,” said Meagan Myers Hanson, a former GOP legislator. “And Republicans are going to have to work 10 times as hard and really make a play for voters.”

Hyosub.Shin / ajc.com

Hyosub.Shin / ajc.com

Trump’s visit comes with high stakes. He’s holding his rally at Georgia State University’s Convocation Center, the same venue where Megan Thee Stallion fired up supporters for Harris on Tuesday. A lackluster audience would draw embarrassing comparisons.

It’s his first joint event in Georgia with his running mate, U.S. Sen. JD Vance, whose rocky rollout last month sparked concerns among senior Republicans and influential activists — and led Trump to downplay the Ohio Republican’s role in their White House campaign.

It comes on the heels of an explosive interview at a conference of Black journalists in Chicago, where Trump wrongly said Harris “became a Black person” only recently and repeatedly questioned her racial identity.

His insulting remarks about the first Black woman and woman of Asian descent to serve as vice president undercut Republican vows to win over more voters of color, and they prompted pushback from Trump allies who expressed bewilderment over his strategy.

With much on the line, Harris supporters hope Trump’s recent struggles force moderate and independent voters who were already wary of the GOP ticket to give the Democrats a second look.

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Former Lt Gov. Geoff Duncan, one of the most prominent Republicans to endorse Harris, came away from her rally in Atlanta more convinced the race is up for grabs. He said it had the feeling of a “national championship” game.

“If Donald Trump thinks he is going to steamroll his way back to the White House, he has another thing coming,” Duncan said. “This race is still about the 10% in the middle, and my money is on Harris getting their attention better than Donald Trump.”

A cringe moment

Saturday’s rally will also test the Trump campaign’s organizing mettle.

One of the defining takeaways from the Republican National Convention last month in Milwaukee was the overwhelming sense of GOP unity, as the MAGA base and mainstream conservatives closed ranks around Trump’s comeback bid.

Saturday’s rally will serve as a barometer for the campaign in Georgia — and anything short of a packed house would set up a sharp contrast with the noisy throng that filled the same venue on a weekday night to celebrate Harris.

The former president’s campaign launched a volley of digital ads earlier this week to juice up attendance, and Trump’s loyalists are expected to show up in full force. Just as notable will be those who aren’t expected to attend: a trio of GOP incumbents Trump tried to oust in 2022.

Hyosub Shin/AJC

Aides to Gov. Brian Kemp, Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger all indicated each would skip the rally, as they have done other Trump events since 2021.

Kemp’s fraught history with Trump is the stuff of Georgia political lore, and he added to their saga this summer when he revealed he cast a blank ballot in the state’s primary rather than vote for the former president.

The second-term governor, however, has also maintained he will back Trump in November and trekked to the Republican convention in Milwaukee to press the case for down-ticket GOP candidates.

Any internal friction is no small matter in Georgia, particularly as Harris is consolidating her party’s base. Swing voters helped elect Biden in 2020 and powered victories by Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock in U.S. Senate races in 2021 and 2022.

And many senior Republicans cringed after Trump turned a question-and-answer session at a conference of Black journalists in Chicago into an attack on Harris’ racial identity as he suggested she cynically embraced her heritage for political gain.

“I did not know she was Black until a couple of years ago when she happened to turn Black,” he said. “And now she wants to be known as Black. Is she Indian, or is she Black?”

Party leaders want him to instead focus on attacks that could stem her momentum by describing her record as a “radical” prosecutor out of touch with mainstream voters.

A multimillion-dollar ad blitz launched in Georgia this week hammers her record on immigration, prompting Harris to defend her stance during her Atlanta rally and vow to revive a compromise border security deal that Trump helped scuttle.

Former U.S. Rep. Doug Collins of Gainesville brought up the slaying of Laken Riley, a nursing student who was killed while jogging near the University of Georgia campus. A Venezuelan man authorities say entered the country illegally has pleaded not guilty to murder charges in her death.

“Donald Trump is not afraid to address the murder of Laken Riley and the awful immigration policies that created this tragedy,” he said. “Kamala Harris won’t even say her name.”

Other Republicans are hoping that Trump sticks to a similar script. Lt. Gov. Burt Jones cast Harris as an extension of Biden’s “failed” White House administration — and said that Georgia voters will come to see her that way, too.

“The name on the ballot may have changed, but the failed policies didn’t,” Jones said. “It doesn’t matter who the Democrats nominate, they will have to defend the worst inflation in decades and the worst border crisis in modern history.”