On paper, Peachtree City, Georgia, is a safe space. Some 20 miles southwest of Atlanta, the planned community has long been a harbor for airport workers and sprawls with golf courses and over 100 miles of cart paths. Public concern about law and order often favors Republicans, but voters in the swing state of Georgia show how the issue has extra complexities this year. The Atlanta suburb's crime rate is far below the national average. Teens arrested for breaking into a smoke shop was a top local story this fall. Beneath the idyllic scene lie concerns about public safety. One resident recalls a scene where parents felt the need to surround a group of young, female volleyball players during a tournament trip to a nearby town to protect them from leering groups of what appeared to be Central American immigrants, the Christian Science Monitor reports. “Law and order is the key issue – everything hinges on that,” says Steve Arnold, a mortgage broker. “You can’t have open borders and feel safe anywhere. Crime comes to you.”
Arnold has deeper concerns, about the state of criminal justice. Are political elites using the power of the state to pick winners and losers, including the presidency? “If power means everything and rights nothing, what kind of country is there to inherit?” says his wife Tammy, a voter, like him, for former President Trump. Other voters in Peachtree City flip that coin: How can anyone be safe if criminality comes from the top? “If we have a leader who eschews the Constitution itself, well, at the end of the day, none of us are free,” says Lana Bates, a lifelong Republican who just voted for Democrat Kamala Harris. Law and order is a major issue for many Georgia voters, who could swing the election. Public concerns about disorder often deliver ballot-box gains to the Republican Party, with its promises of stability and tough-on-crime policies. This year there’s also an unusual plot twist: a Republican former president who’s been convicted in criminal court, running against a Democratic former prosecutor whom critics accuse of being soft on illegal immigration and other crimes.
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