By: Trip Jennings
By the time you read these words, I will be comfortably lodged in Atlanta, Georgia, a metropolis known for many things — as the cradle of the civil rights movement, the home of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the world’s busiest airport.
It also happens to be the heart of one of a few battleground states being heavily wooed this year by former president Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.
I am not in Georgia to report on the fer- vor with which each side is competing during an election that is one of the strangest in American history: in the space of 10 days this summer, a sitting president dropped out, his competitor was almost assassinated and the sitting vice president jumped in the race, dramatically altering the contest and electoral map.
Nothing so dramatic.
I am attending a journalism conference, with a few days built in to visit my brother and his family an hour east in Athens, home to the University of Georgia and its vaunted football team and mecca for 80s college radio aficionados. Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Famers R.E.M. are from there.
So, what does Atlanta have to do with New Mexico?
It’s mostly nostalgia.
As a longtime political junkie, I suddenly find myself excited about a few days in a hotly contested state and imagining what life is like for Georgia journalists.
Not so long ago I was one of them — an overworked reporter reading polls and press releases and attending rallies to gain a sense of who might win New Mexico and edge closer to winning the White House.
The year was 2008, and New Mexico was a presidential battleground.
I will never forget the day Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama touched down in Albuquerque for competing rallies. I attended both as a reporter. It was a few weeks before Election Day, but it was clear by the turnout that day who was destined to become the 44th president of the United States.
A Vietnam War hero, McCain, a man comfortable with serious policy discussions and respected by tens of millions of Americans, including me, attracted hun- dreds of supporters at the state fairgrounds.
Obama held his rally later in the day.
Let me start by saying I’ve been to innu- merable political events as a reporter across the country, for both Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives. They have varied in intensity, usually dependent on many factors. The point is, I have logged my time and it usually is an inoculation against easily being impressed. So, when I say the Obama rally felt unlike anything I had ever encountered, I am attempting to convey how electric that night felt. Perhaps it was the tens of thou- sands of people who rushed Johnson Field at the University of New Mexico when officials let the crowds in prior to Obama’s appearance. Or the speakers who preceded Obama, including comedian Georgie Lopez. Or Obama’s own soaring rhetoric which I had observed four years earlier in Boston at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. Maybe it was the accumulation of it all.
Whatever, I walked away thinking to myself I would remember the day for the rest of my life.
That’s why I’m excited to be flying into a presidential battleground state, even as a conference goer. I’m certain I won’t get within 10 miles of Kamala Harris or Donald Trump if they choose to touch down in Atlanta for a rally. But one can hope. Once a political junkie, always a political junkie.
It’s mostly nostalgia.
As a longtime political junkie, I suddenly find myself excited about a few days in a hotly contested state and imagining what life is like for Georgia journalists.
Who knows? Maybe Georgia will surprise me. Maybe I’ll come back with stories about the time I saw Trump or Harris’ cavalcade motoring through Atlanta and a jolt of energy passed through me as I felt up close to one of the few rituals in American life that, if all the stars align, just might live up to the word sacred.
Trip Jennings started his career in Georgia at his hometown newspaper, The Augusta Chronicle, before working at newspapers in California, Florida and Connecticut. Since 2005, Trip has covered politics and state government for the Albuquerque Journal, The New Mexico Independent and the Santa Fe New Mexican. He holds a Master’s of Divinity from Columbia Theological Seminary. In 2012, he co-founded New Mexico In Depth, a nonpartisan, nonprofit media outlet.
