VALDOSTA — Standing in the Lowndes County Sheriff’s Department on Thursday, Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance held a piece of candy in his hands and asked the question that nervous parents have come to dread.
“So is this candy or is this drugs?” he said.
The answer, of course, was drugs — specifically THC, the psychoactive component found in cannabis. Officers told Vance that drug smugglers had disguised it to look like candy so they could sneak it into the country.
Moments later, Vance would use this story to fire up a crowd of hundreds of supporters sweating outside in the South Georgia sun.
“We know what’s going to happen is a pack of that candy finds its way into our communities or to our playgrounds,” Vance said. “Think about how sick (Vice President) Kamala Harris has to be to let those people do business in our country instead of throwing them the hell out of our country.”
With the polls showing a tight presidential election between former Republican President Donald Trump and Harris, Vance on Thursday made his second trip to Georgia — one of a handful of competitive states. His visit coincided with Trump’s tour of the U.S. border with Mexico on the same day Harris was set to accept the Democratic nomination in Chicago.
In a presidential race reset by the sudden departure of President Joe Biden, Republicans see immigration as a potential difference maker — particularly in Georgia. Immigration was listed as one of the most important issues for likely Georgia voters in a recent Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll.
The issue has resonated in Georgia after 22-year-old college student Laken Riley was killed while jogging on the University of Georgia’s campus. Jose Ibarra, a Venezuelan whom prosecutors say entered the United States illegally, has been charged in her death.
Thursday, Vance called Riley “a beautiful, beautiful young girl who would still be alive today if Kamala Harris had done her job and not let these drug cartels come to our communities.”
While the Trump campaign has repeatedly tied illegal immigration to an increase in violent crime, multiple studies have shown that’s not the case. Last year, a study from Stanford University found first-generation immigrants are 30% less likely to be incarcerated than U.S.-born whites and 60% less likely to be imprisoned compared with people born in the United States.
Illegal border crossings have fallen sharply in recent months. U.S. Customs and Border Protection said “encounters” with migrants in July were the lowest monthly total along the southwest border since September 2020.
Here in Valdosta, Lowndes County Sheriff Ashley Paulk agreed violent crimes were not an issue. The bigger problem, he said, was drug smugglers coming through Valdosta via the nearby junction of I-10 and I-75. Thursday, it was Paulk’s officers who showed Vance stacks of guns and illegal drugs they had seized in the county.
“I know (Trump’s) got a solution to it,” said Paulk, a Democrat who calls himself a “rabid supporter” of the former president. “He’s going to close that border.”
The Harris campaign has blamed Trump for any problems at the border, accusing him of orchestrating the demise of bipartisan border security legislation earlier this year.
“More people are dying of fentanyl overdoses because he wouldn’t let Senate Republicans vote for this bill because he had to have it for a campaign issue,” U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., told reporters on Thursday ahead of Trump’s visit to the border.
Vance, who was in the Senate when the border security bill failed, said the legislation “had nothing to do with border security,” saying it was about making law the policies of Biden and Harris, which he did not support.
Vance was well received by the hundreds of people in the audience on Thursday, saying that “we’re not going to win without them.” He also tried to patch up a lingering feud between Trump and Georgia’s popular Republican governor, Brian Kemp.
Vance said he spoke with Kemp “very briefly” earlier in the day.
“I read the headlines. Brian Kemp and Donald Trump have had some disagreements,” Vance said. “I can 100% guarantee you that Brian Kemp is behind this ticket. He wants us to win.”
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