Black rural voters could be key to Democrats eyeing Georgia

Sitting on the wooden pews of a small white brick church on a hot Wednesday afternoon in Georgia's Gnat Line, a group of residents gathered to chat about the upcoming governor's race and the issues concerning them in their community, from economic development to health care to infrastructure.

A particular topic of interest was a strategy for voter turnout — and how to fight the barriers to it — in what could be a pivotal midterm election.

"We've got to get out to the nursing homes, tell the DJ if that's what we've got to do to get to the young folks," said Houston County NAACP Vice President Jonathan Johnson, thinking aloud as the audience nodded in agreement. "We could start a cookout . If we could do that as a community, we could make a big difference in this election."

A bus carrying members of Black Voters Matter departs for a tour of rural Georgia after a brief sendoff rally Wednesday, Aug. 22, 2018, in Stockbridge, Ga. The tour was reaching out to black and woman voters in rural Georgia, Florida and Mississippi. The Black Belt’s overlap with Trump Country could factor into the elections across the South next month, including competitive races for the governor’s mansion in Florida and Senate in Mississippi.(AP PhotoJohn Bazemore)

These were not the rural voters who have gotten so much attention after helping elect President Donald Trump in 2016. They are the black rural voters living in red states. They're staunchly Democratic even as they're surrounded by white voters who are almost all Republicans. And they're often overlooked by big-name candidates from both parties.

"There's a narrative that is out in the world right now around what rural America looks like, and it completely erases the existence of black rural folks," said Tamika Middleton, organizing director for Care in Action, a domestic workers advocacy group, in attendance at the church gathering. "We exist. There's never been black folks who were not fighting and resisting in the rural South."

The Black Belt's overlap with Trump country could factor into the elections across the South next month, including competitive races for the governor's mansion in Florida and the Senate in Mississippi. That raises the possibility that black rural voters will have an unusual opportunity to make an impact on statewide races.

Black Voters Matter co-founder LaTosha Brown, right, gets a hug from a well wisher before departing on The South Rising Tour 2018 on Aug. 22, 2018, in Stockbridge, Ga. The tour was reaching out to black and woman voters in rural Georgia, Florida and Mississippi. The Black Belt’s overlap with Trump Country could factor into the elections across the South next month, including competitive races for the governor’s mansion in Florida and Senate in Mississippi. (AP PhotoJohn Bazemore)

But it's Georgia where black rural voters could be especially important as Stacey Abrams campaigns to become the nation's first black female governor. A Mississippi native who moved to Georgia as a child, Abrams is the first Democrat in years to have a real chance of winning the governor's race. And from the beginning, when she launched her campaign in south Georgia's Dougherty County, she's made outreach to rural voters a key part of her strategy.

"Since the beginning of the campaign, Stacey Abrams has been focused on reaching out to a broad coalition of voters in every part of the state, including rural communities of color who have been left behind for too long," said Lauren Groh-Wargo, Abrams' campaign manager.

Statewide, a third of rural Georgians are people of color, and Abrams has been making her case to black rural voters in churches like the one in Warner Robins. In recent months, she has spent time in towns like Riceboro, Americus, Thomasville, Fort Valley and Cordele — far from the usual Democratic campaign stops like Atlanta, Savannah, Macon and Albany.

A woman listens to Black Voters Matter co-founder LaTosha Brown speak at a church as part of The South Rising Tour 2018 Aug. 22, 2018, in Warner Robins, Ga. The tour was reaching out to black and woman voters in rural Georgia, Florida and Mississippi. The Black Belt’s overlap with Trump Country could factor into the elections across the South next month, including competitive races for the governor’s mansion in Florida and Senate in Mississippi. (AP PhotoJohn Bazemore)

During the primary, Abrams' efforts paid off in places like predominantly black Washington County, where she campaigned in May. Turnout there nearly doubled from four years earlier, with Abrams getting 69 percent of the vote this spring, according to turnout data from the Georgia secretary of state.

Rural blacks' priorities often differ from those of their urban counterparts. Many suffer from health disparities, including obesity, maternal mortality, diabetes and sickle cell, living in regions with few hospitals, governed by state officials who have rejected the expansion of Medicare that would help them afford treatment. The Black Belt was historically an agricultural region that remains starved for economic development, and the class and power divide that began during slavery still persists along racial lines in many communities.

While the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 politically changed the region with the onslaught of black public elected officials, another result was voter suppression, said Georgia State University historian Maurice Hobson.

A man prays Black Voters Matter's The South Rising Tour 2018 on Aug. 22, 2018, in Warner Robins, Ga. The tour was reaching out to black and woman voters in rural Georgia, Florida and Mississippi. The Black Belt’s overlap with Trump Country could factor into the elections across the South next month, including competitive races for the governor’s mansion in Florida and Senate in Mississippi. (AP PhotoJohn Bazemore)

"It's a black population that has been so mistreated and so marginalized by the political system that many people are like, 'My vote doesn't count anyway,'" Hobson said. "There is a sense of hopelessness."

That dynamic has paralyzed some blacks in the South, but this fall's midterms could signal a shift among those voters and a way forward for Democrats seeking their votes.

"Our people have voted year after year after year, and they have not seen their lives change," said LaTosha Brown, co-founder of the Black Voters Matter Fund, which is touring the black South to register and turn out voters this cycle, told the crowd in Warner Robins. "We got a black woman that is the Democratic nominee at the top of the ticket in a state where we couldn't even vote . Y'all are standing on land where our people died as slaves . We gotta remember that."

A man listens as Black Voters Matter co-founder LaTosha Brown speaks at a church as part of The South Rising Tour 2018 on Aug. 22, 2018, in Warner Robins, Ga. The tour was reaching out to black and woman voters in rural Georgia, Florida and Mississippi. The Black Belt’s overlap with Trump Country could factor into the elections across the South next month, including competitive races for the governor’s mansion in Florida and Senate in Mississippi. (AP PhotoJohn Bazemore)

Kattie Kendrick, former Peach County Democratic Party chairwoman, who was on a recent tour stop in Fort Valley, Georgia, said that mobilizing voters in her part of the state has been challenging but that outside interest could help to energize them.

"We do not necessarily unite, but when other people know that the black people in Peach County and throughout rural Georgia matter, that makes a difference," Kendrick said.

Down the road in Terrell County, the Rev. Ezekiel Holley plotted how to get nearly 1,000 of his neighbors who typically vote in presidential elections to show up for the midterms. Nicknamed "Terrible Terrell," three churches in the county were burned in the 1950s to keep blacks from voting. Today, Holley said, the problem is apathy and frustration with elected officials who forget they can't see a doctor or need their roads paved.

"Most of our citizens feel that people we have elected have let us down," he explained. "They get elected and forget about who elected them and their platform. So why should I keep on voting for you?"

"The majority of the national politicians feel that ... they don't have to worry about little rural places. Most folks are concentrating on metro Atlanta more than the rest of Georgia. Hopefully they're getting the picture now," Holley said.

Holley went to see Abrams speak at a campaign event earlier this month with former President Jimmy Carter in his hometown of Plains. The pair talked about Medicaid expansion, which Holley believes will bring jobs, better health conditions and industry into the state. That she announced her plans there said to him that she cares about his corner of the state.

It's a message Holley plans to take to the registered voters he hopes to help turn out in Terrell County in the coming few weeks, but he's still not sure whether they will show up.

"I can't give a good answer on that yet," he said. "People are excited, but Nov. 6 is going to tell the story."

Whack is The Associated Press' national writer on race and ethnicity. Follow her work on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/emarvelous.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — A hard-line cleric leading Friday prayers in Iran's capital demanded the death penalty for protesters detained in a nationwide crackdown and directly threatened U.S. President Donald Trump, showing the rage gripping authorities in the Islamic Republic over demonstrations that have challenged their authority.

Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami's sermon, carried by Iranian state radio, sparked chants from those gathered for prayers, including: “Armed hypocrites should be put to death!” Executions, as well as the killing of peaceful protesters, are two of the red lines laid down by Trump for possible military action against Iran over the protests, which began Dec. 28 over Iran's ailing economy and soon morphed into protests directly challenging the country's theocracy.

Iranian authorities cut off access to the internet Jan. 8 and intensified a bloody crackdown on all dissent, which the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency reports has killed at least 2,677 people.

Khatami, appointed by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and a member of both the country’s Assembly of Experts and its Guardian Council, described the protesters as the “butlers” of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and “Trump’s soldiers.” He insisted their plans “imagined disintegrating the country.”

“They should wait for hard revenge from the system,” Khatami said of Netanyahu and Trump. “Americans and Zionists should not expect peace.”

Khatami long has been known for his hard-line views in Iran, including in 2007, when he said a fatwa calling for the death of writer Salman Rushdie remained in effect. He also threatened Israel in a 2018 speech by saying Iran could “raze Tel Aviv and Haifa to the ground” with its missile arsenal.

His fiery speech came as allies of Iran and the United States alike sought to defuse tensions. Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke Friday to both Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and Israel's Netanyahu, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

Peskov said “the situation in the region is quite tense, and the president is continuing his efforts to help de-escalate it.”

Days after Trump pledged “help is on its way” for the protesters, both the demonstrations and the prospect of imminent U.S. retaliation appeared to have receded. One diplomat told The Associated Press that top officials from Egypt, Oman, Saudi Arabia and Qatar had raised concerns with Trump that a U.S. military intervention would shake the global economy and destabilize an already volatile region.

Yet the Trump administration has warned it will act if Iran executes detained protesters. Iran and the U.S. traded angry accusations Thursday at a session of the United Nations Security Council, with U.S. ambassador Mike Waltz saying that Trump “has made it clear that all options are on the table to stop the slaughter.”

Gholam Hossein Darzi, the deputy Iranian ambassador to the U.N., blasted the U.S. for what he said was American “direct involvement in steering unrest in Iran to violence.”

Khatami, the hard-line cleric, also provided the first overall statistics on damage from the protests, claiming 350 mosques, 126 prayer halls and 20 other holy places had sustained damage. Another 80 homes of Friday prayer leaders — an important position within Iran's theocracy — were also damaged, likely underlining the anger demonstrators felt toward symbols of the government.

He said 400 hospitals, 106 ambulance, 71 fire department vehicles and another 50 emergency vehicles also sustained damage.

As a cleric in the public positions, Khatami would have access to such data from authorities, and mentioning it at Friday prayers likely meant Iran's government wanted the information to be communicated without having to formally address the public.

Even as protests appeared to have been smothered inside Iran, thousands of exiled Iranians and their supporters have taken to the streets in cities across Europe to shout out their rage at the government of the Islamic Republic.

More than a week into the nationwide internet shutdown, some Iranians crossed borders to communicate with the outside world. A border crossing with Iran in Turkey’s eastern province of Van has not seen a major influx of Iranians fleeing the unrest, but a number of Iranians crossing the border Friday said they have been making short jaunts to the neighboring country to get around the communications blackout.

“I will go back to Iran after they open the internet,” said a traveler who gave only his first name, Mehdi, out of security concerns.

The death toll of at least 2,677, provided by the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, exceeds that of any other round of protest or unrest in Iran in decades and recalls the chaos surrounding the country’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.

The agency has been accurate throughout years of demonstrations, relying on a network of activists inside Iran that confirms all reported fatalities.

The AP has been unable to independently confirm the group’s toll. The Iranian government has not provided casualty figures.

People cross an intersection in downtown Tehran, Iran, Friday, Jan. 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

Vehicles drive in downtown Tehran, Iran, Friday, Jan. 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

A street vendor adjusts clothes for sale in downtown Tehran, Iran, Friday, Jan. 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

Vehicles drive in downtown Tehran, Iran, Friday, Jan. 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

FILE - Iranian senior cleric Ahmad Khatami delivers his sermon during Friday prayer ceremony in Tehran, Iran, Friday, Jan. 5, 2018. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi, File)