Biden’s clean energy law revived this red corner of Georgia. Voters there are backing Trump anyway

By CNN

Published September 27, 2024 4:00 AM

CNN

By Phil Mattingly and Andrew Seger, CNN

Dalton, Georgia (CNN) — The face of a new era in American manufacturing is here, just off Interstate 75, tucked into this northwest corner of Georgia.

That’s where you’ll find the Qcells plant that pumps out 32,000 solar panels a day and has a total panel production capacity of 5.1 gigawatts. For context, officials note, the peak capacity of the Hoover Dam is roughly 2 gigawatts.

“When I came here, there was dirt. There was no building,” said Lisa Nash, the plant manager here, walking CNN through the high-tech factory floor in August. “I was the first person hired.”

Asked if she could have envisioned where things are now, she didn’t hesitate: “No.”

In Nash’s view, the dramatic growth isn’t just a success story for the company or industry, it’s also major win for the community here in Dalton.

“The population’s growing. They’re buying houses, rent, shopping, eating out. They’re contributing back into the local community, paying taxes,” Nash said.

It’s a cutting-edge operation that was made possible by the sweeping climate investment law enacted by the Biden administration in 2022.

“We’ve had lots of support in the state and federal level of various kinds,” said Scott Moskowitz, the head of market strategy and public affairs at Qcells. “But it wasn’t till the Inflation Reduction Act passed, which really provided the spark that this industry needed to make these types of investments.”

Which is why Vice President Kamala Harris traveled to the plant last year to highlight its growth – and speak to some of its employees.

“To meet her and to have a conversation with her, I was shocked because I was thinking, you know, she’s up here, but she’s actually down to earth, very straightforward,” said Kimberly Richardson, the Qcells employee selected by management to introduce Harris during her visit.

Richardson embodies a new generation of manufacturing workers – someone with no experience in solar panels or the green technology space prior to joining Qcells who has quickly acclimated – and risen – inside the company, where she’s now in charge of the plant’s recycling operation.

For Richardson, a Black woman, Harris’ campaign for president carries a deep meaning.

“She represents every woman in the United States, every woman,” Richardson said. “She set the tone for every woman in the United States, every little girl, to say, ‘I can do this,’ and that’s a good thing.”

But while Georgia may be a hotly contested battleground state, Richardson’s view isn’t exactly widespread here, where support for former President Donald Trump runs strong.

“She wasn’t well received in north Georgia,” Kasey Carpenter, the Republican state representative for the area, said of the Harris visit.

The Qcells plant offers a window into the convergence of local, state and federal government aligning to accelerate a manufacturing transition that has turbocharged a local economy. That the effort has crossed party lines is rare enough in these polarized times.

But that it happened in a community that backs a presidential candidate who has attacked the very law that is central to its rapid expansion underscores the complex – and in this case, contradictory – overlap of politics and a local economy.

Trump strikes a chord

Located in the congressional district represented by GOP firebrand Marjorie Taylor Greene, Dalton is Trump country.

“The independence that we keep up here – it’s that independence and outsider that he’s really struck a chord with,” Carpenter said of Trump’s rock-solid support in the area. “And my folks, they appreciate that. And quite frankly that I appreciate that too.”

Carpenter is far from a die-hard Trump supporter.

“We’re in a world where we get two candidates, but we have 27 boxes of cereal on the shelf. That’s the world I live in,” he said. “It’s that frustrating that you have two candidates.”

But for voters here, the political debate over the economy comes down to one thing.

“Inflation is such a big issue for our community right now that that’s going to trump anything that kind of I think about,” Carpenter said.

This is the paradox playing out during a dramatic comeback for this part of the state.

The Qcells plant – the largest of its kind in the Western Hemisphere – sits in what has long been known as the carpet capital of the world.

The moniker can be found on the signs welcoming visitors to Dalton, which has held a dominant market share of the carpet and flooring industry for decades.

But it also left the area particular vulnerable to something most thought was impossible until 2008: a housing market crash.

“It was a bloodbath for us here,” Carpenter said. “It was a ghost town. And it took us years to get out of it.”

The market collapse sparked local leaders to start thinking through – and setting up the infrastructure for – the diversification of the town’s economy.

That overlapped with efforts at the state level – most recently by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp – to line up incentives for major companies to relocate to or build in Georgia.

The Biden administration’s incentives from the federal side turbocharged the efforts on green energy.

“They are all equally important,” Nash said when asked whose support was most critical between federal, state and local government. “It’s like a recipe and without one ingredient, you can’t successfully have this project.”

The result has been the revival of a model that was thought to be a thing of the past.

“If you walk around in the factory, you’re going see a broad age band,” Nash said. “We have a 65-year-old father. His son and his daughter work here. There are high school students that we interview because of their gaming.”

What was once aspirational is now reality – and growing.

‘A hometown feel’

Just about 50 miles down I-75 is Cartersville, where on a recent Saturday the center of town was jam-packed with residents stopping through booths filled by local vendors selling locally sourced food and agricultural goods.

For two years running, this has been ranked the top farmer’s market in Georgia, which might not be expected in a county that voted 75% for Trump in 2020.

But in some ways, it’s a key element to an approach that helped the town lure Qcells to build its next plant here, just a few miles away from where CNN linked up with its mayor, Matt Santini.

This is clearly a Republican town, with deep-rooted support for the former president. But in Santini’s mind, the true nature of the place is the community itself.

“It’s doubled in size since I moved here in the early ‘90s, but it’s still a place where, again, you can walk through a farmer’s market,” Santini said. “You see people talking and getting along with each other. We have a hometown feel.”

Back in Dalton, that hometown feel is exactly the vibe a visitor gets walking into the Oakwood Cafe.

The restaurant is technically the day job for Carpenter, the state legislator – and one that keeps him connected to the community he represents while in Atlanta when the Legislature is in session.

“I’m real connected,” Carpenter said with a chuckle. “I fry their chicken on Monday, and Saturdays I’m washing their dishes.”

Carpenter describes his community and its residents with pride.

“It’s blue-collar, man. We’re all workers,” he said.

But he acknowledges there’s a heavy dose of ideological irony in the economic engine that has taken root in the area over the past few years.

“We’re growing the green energy that they don’t necessarily care that much about,” he said. “But I think they’re coming around because they see the impact on the economy.”

That impact, he notes, has been significant.

“Whether it’s janitorial, whether it’s restaurants, catering, whether it’s, you know, plastics, you know, garbage bags, whatever, shipping goods, all of that stuff flows downstream from something like that,” Carpenter said.

Threats that haven’t resonated

That downstream effect – perhaps most tangible in the form of downtown Dalton’s new boutique hotel, right across the street from the Oakwood Cafe, the area’s first in 50 years and evidence to many of the city’s comeback.

Still, the campaign-trail threats from Trump to repeal pillars of the climate law that sparked the growth haven’t moved voters here – or really resonated.

“I don’t think they realize that if the whole thing is repealed, it will affect those 2,500 jobs down on the south end of the county. And it’s real,” Carpenter said. “It will have consequences.”

Qcells representatives are quick to point out that they first broke ground in Dalton in 2018 because Trump’s tariffs on solar panels incentivized production stateside.

Still, the former president’s threats are impossible to ignore, even if the bipartisan support for the project across the federal, state and local levels offers it a level of protection should Trump win.

“You want to ask me that after November?” Nash, the Qcells plant manager, responded when asked about the future for the industry.

But she underscored the scale of the transformation already underway – and what that means for the future.

“No, I’m optimistic because we’re just scratching the surface,” she said.

It’s a future Nash’s parents thought didn’t exist.

“Both of them said, ‘Don’t go into manufacturing,’” she recalled. “I’d like to think they’re both proud of me today because of this. I look at my kids and my grandkids, and I’m thinking: ‘I wouldn’t mind them doing that.’”

It’s a window into a transformation that has taken hold of an entire community – a one-industry town no more.

Asked if there were any plans to add “Solar capital of the world” onto the current Dalton signs in town, Carpenter thought about it for a minute.

“No, but we should, though,” he said. “We’ve gotta wait and see what happens. Right now, the story still remains.”

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