The site is a few miles from the Fulton County Courthouse, where prosecutors have been working for more than three years to convict Trump and more than a dozen of his associates on election interference charges.
A short drive away is the Fulton County Jail, where authorities arrested Trump and 18 co-conspirators on racketeering charges and took the famous photo that became the first arrest of a U.S. president in American history.
Credit: NYT
Credit: NYT
Not far from there is the Georgia Capitol, where Trump’s influence has influenced legislative debates on abortion rights, election rules and public safety policing.
Plus, in the bigger picture, this debate is taking place in the heart of key states for both campaigns: Republicans view Georgia as a must-win state, while Democrats want to prove that Biden’s narrow victory in the Peach State in 2020 was no flash in the pan or a fluke.
“This debate is like a Netflix limited series in all that it offers,” former Democratic Rep. Jen Jordan said of the set-up.
Jordan added that the city backdrop may serve as a reminder that despite the reality TV drama of the race, “these candidates are having a real impact on voters’ lives and elections really matter.”
The battle for Georgia is one of the reasons the two sides agreed to a CNN debate.
The two teams are battling for Georgia’s 16 electoral votes, four years after Biden became the first Democrat to win the state since Bill Clinton’s 1992 victory.
Both candidates have crisscrossed the state over the past two years, and Vice President Kamala Harris has visited more than 10 times since being elected in 2020, including two stops in Atlanta within a week of each other.
“We’re seen as a very strong contender,” said Charles Block, a political scientist at the University of Georgia. “It’s clear that the Democratic leadership hasn’t given up on us.”
Trump’s ongoing legal battles will also factor heavily into the debate, which comes just weeks after he was convicted in New York on felony charges related to paying hush money to porn actresses.
Voters need hardly be reminded that Trump also faces a separate set of felony charges in his Fulton County election interference trial, which has been delayed until 2025 while an appeals court considers a motion to disbar District Attorney Fani Willis.
The lawsuit stems from extraordinary efforts by Trump and his allies to discredit Biden’s victory in Georgia, including spreading lies about Fulton County’s vote-counting process at State Farm Arena.
Trump and several allies falsely claimed that local officials were smuggling “suitcases full of ballots” during the delayed count, but an investigation found that the delay was caused by a plumbing problem. An investigation also found that two poll workers were passing each other ginger mints, not a USB port full of ballots, as Trump allies falsely claimed.
There will also be a lot of attention on Trump’s love-hate relationship with Atlanta, including his attack on the city shortly after the 2016 presidential election in anger over then-Congressman John Lewis’ skipping the inauguration because he didn’t consider him the “legitimate president” of the Republican Party.
At the time, Trump tweeted that much of Atlanta was “in horrible shape and falling apart” and described civil rights icon Lewis as “all talk and no action.”
Since then, Trump has largely refrained from making insults about Atlanta as he rallies around the state to galvanize voters, while Biden has added thank-yous to voters in recent campaign rallies.
“If you ever doubt the power of the vote, come to Georgia,” he told supporters in Buckhead in May. “You’re the reason I won. You’re the reason I’m president right now.”
