ATLANTA — President Donald Trump traveled to Georgia on Friday to rally Republican voters three days after early voting got underway and with Election Day just over two weeks away.
His visit was meant to boost the campaigns of GOP candidates, especially U.S. Rep. Mike Collins, who is running to unseat Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff, and businessman Rick Jackson, who is running against former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms for governor.
Trump said Republican turnout declines when he is not on the ballot.
"You have to go out and vote, so pretend I'm on the ballot," Trump said at the rally in Dalton. "I won this state by a lot, and if my people get out to vote these guys are going to have a landslide."
Trump ridiculed Ossoff as "radical left"
and said he looks like the comic character Pee-wee Herman.
Trump blasted Bottoms as "an incompetent disaster," adding, "if she becomes governor she will ruin your state."
Democrats said they were happy about the visit, predicting Trump's presence would backfire for GOP candidates amid frustration over rising prices.
Charlie Bailey, chairman of the Democratic Party of Georgia, said earlier in the day that he too wanted people to vote as if Trump were on the ballot.
Speaking at his party's headquarters in Atlanta, Bailey attacked Jackson's company's contracts with the state, calling him "another creepy billionaire that has made a career off of taxpayer dollars."
Bailey repeated previous criticisms of Collins over reports linking some of Collins' former congressional office staffers to white supremacists and over white supremacist social media posts by Collins' son-in-law.
Bailey also attacked Collins over a report by The Daily Beast on Thursday that said several Collins campaign "convoy captains" had criminal backgrounds, including one who had pleaded guilty to sexual battery in an incident involving his stepdaughter who was younger than 16.
"At some point," Bailey said, "you are the company you keep, and if someone just keeps on having sorry, immoral, evil people around them, well, that says something about them."
A Collins campaign spokesman said convoy captains are volunteers and that the campaign was unaware of the backgrounds of the people cited in the report, adding that more than 800 people had volunteered to help Collins win.
Also on Friday, critics of Jackson again called on him to stop running an ad about the shooting death of Secoriea Turner in 2020, when Bottoms was mayor.
The 8-year-old was killed when armed protesters opened fire on her mother's Jeep south of downtown Atlanta. Jackson has used the incident to criticize Bottoms' leadership.
Secoriea's mother, Charmaine Turner, has accused Jackson of exploiting the family's pain for political gain. Last week, her supporters called on Jackson to pull the ad.
He didn't, so on Friday they tried again.
"This is barbaric," said Shanan Jones, president of the Concerned Black Clergy of Metropolitan Atlanta.
A spokesman for the Jackson campaign blamed the child's death on Bottoms, saying that her handling of public unrest was "one of the major reasons why Rick is running."
At the Trump rally Friday, Jackson, whose childhood in foster care has been a staple of his campaign, said no president had done more for abused and neglected foster children than Trump.
He did not say the president's name, though, referring to him as "this man here" while Trump stood nearby.
After pledging during the GOP primary that he would lead like Trump, Jackson has shifted during the run-up to the general election. With moderate voters in play, Jackson has been saying that he will govern like Gov. Brian Kemp.
Collins criticized Ossoff on immigration, transgender policy and other issues, saying voters should send him instead of Ossoff to Washington.
"Jon Ossoff hates Trump more than he loves Georgia," Collins said. "It's shameful."
Trump called former U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene a "whack job" but praised the looks of Collins and several of the other GOP men running for statewide office, noting their relative youth.
Jackson is older than those down-ballot candidates, but he still won praise from the president.
"I actually think that Rick Jackson is a very handsome, distinguished, beautiful looking guy," Trump said.
his article is available through a partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Association's nonprofit, tax-exempt Educational Foundation.
This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Trump tells Georgia voters to pretend he is on the ballot
