Just In: A Trump hat by a fresh grave: Visiting a Georgia county where 90% of votes go Republican…. See More

Nahunta, Georgia
CNN
Sherri Rowell remembers her grandfather telling her, “Republicans were for rich people.” “That’s what I was always taught. Democrats were for us poor people,” she said.
Money is still tight for many in Brantley County in southeast Georgia, but its people no longer look to Democrats to help. In fact, with more than 90% of voters picking former President Donald Trump in the 2020 election, it’s the most pro-Trump county in the six battleground states that could decide the presidency this year.

CNN met Rowell at a small shop in downtown Nahunta, population 1,000ish, where she was buying a Trump yard sign and a black Trump hat.

She took them to a graveyard outside town, and placed the sign by a fresh grave. She put the Trump hat just in front of the new marker for her first grandson, Talan Tanner. Two months ago, Tanner died after falling out of a pickup truck window and being run over, she said. He was 17.

Sherri Rowell said pocketbook issues were key for her and her grandson, who died before he got a chance to vote. CNN
“No drugs, no alcohol, just youngins being youngins,” Rowell said. She could list the ages of the people his organs were donated to. “There’s a blessing in it somewhere. I mean, the Lord don’t make mistakes. But he did love him some Trump.”

When Talan’s parents arrived at the graveyard, they picked a few new shoots of grass from the top of his grave. His father, Michael Tanner, knelt next to it. Talan had become interested in Trump after he got his first job, Tanner said. “He was like, ‘I make, $9 an hour, and I work this many hours. Why do I only make this much money?’ And I told him, I said, ‘Son, it’s politics. You’ve got to pay taxes,’” Tanner explained.

Talan started researching politics. “He said, ‘Dad, looking at what me and you talked about, we need Donald Trump in office.’ And he just became a huge Trump supporter,” his father said. “We felt this was what he would want — he would want people to know that he was a Trump supporter. He’s not here to be able to say it anymore, so we want it to be shown at his grave.”

Connecting with Trump
Brantley County is rural, about an hour from the Atlantic coast, with the Okefenokee Swamp to the west. It’s a flat landscape with tall pines, palm trees and Spanish moss hanging from the branches of the live oaks. It is not the kind of place that has fallen on hard times because factories moved overseas, several people said, because there had never been much industry there. The pawn shop in Nahunta entices customers with hand-painted signs: “Baby daddy got a new honey? Sell that ring, keep the money.

Ronald Ham, chair of the Brantley County GOP, comes from a family that has been in the area since the 1880s. His great-grandparents were farmers, but he said it’s hard to make a living farming now without many hundreds of acres. Ham leases his land and works as an IT consultant.

Many people in the area live on a fixed income, and there are more mobile homes than brick or wood homes, he said. People have to drive outside the county for work, which means gas prices matter a lot. So does inflation. “When there’s too much month at the end of the money, people vote with their wallet,” Ham said.

They connect with him,” Ham said of Trump. “They’ve got a track record with him, and they feel like he’s fighting for them.”

Rowell said her life had changed quickly when the presidency transitioned from Trump to Joe Biden. “We have to drive so far for work. I drive 50-something miles one way. Gas is $3 and something a gallon. It was $2 a gallon four years ago,” Rowell said. “I could take you to the Piggly Wiggly in Nahunta, you just look at the prices. I don’t know where y’all come from, but compared to what we had four years ago, it’s triple.”

“Trump dropped the taxes on our pay … made a great difference,” she said.

A few years ago, there was money for extra things, like going to Walt Disney World, Rowell said. Even the kids could feel the difference.

And that’s more important to her than Trump’s bombast.