It’s an early Friday morning at the Mosqueda household. The sun hasn’t even come up yet, and the family is already buzzing about the future.
Alberto and Keisha Mosqueda moved from Virginia to Georgia about two years ago, so this will be their first presidential election as residents of the Peach State. It’s people like them who could change the historically red state purple: new residents who vote Democratic, and conservatives who say they can’t bring themselves to vote for the Republican candidate.
As Alberto Mosqueda gets into his morning routine and turns on the news, the first thing he sees is Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump speaking at Thursday’s charity dinner with Hillary Clinton, his Democratic rival.
“You can tell everyone is just looking at him like, ‘Man, just end this,'” Mosqueda says.
Alberto Mosqueda says he considers himself a conservative. He didn’t vote for President Barack Obama in 2008 or 2012. He says he isn’t totally “with her,” to use Clinton’s campaign slogan, but is voting for her anyway.
“I definitely feel each have their own agenda. You have the Republican candidate — I definitely (feel) he’s out there … just to show he is the man. … A lot of arrogance. And then you have the Democrat candidate who (you) just feel she has a hidden agenda; its always been about just what’s best for her,” Mosqueda says.
If it weren’t for Trump, Mosqueda says, he would have probably voted for the Republican candidate instead of Hillary Clinton.
With fewer than 20 days until the election, voters in Georgia are already casting their ballots, and Clinton is hoping to pull out a win in a state that has voted red since 1996.
A poll released Friday by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution shows Trump and Clinton are deadlocked in Georgia, with Trump leading Clinton 44-42% among likely Georgia voters, which is within the poll’s margin of error.
Although Mosqueda, who is Latino, says he’s voting for Clinton, he says he’s still not sold on what she represents. Clinton’s email controversy and her role with Benghazi are the two main subjects that Mosqueda says concern him.
“Being a military guy, you take all of that into account — Benghazi especially, the emails and security, and all that. They’re just direct breaches and direct violations of … the simple things that they teach you even as a lower enlisted guy in the military,” he says.
But he says he can’t bear to vote for Trump, especially with his comments on Latinos.
The Mosquedas say they are taking this election extremely seriously, especially on topics like immigration reform, tensions between the United States and Russia and repealing Obamacare.
Keisha Mosqueda, who is African-American, says Clinton knows more about the issues and that there’s nothing Trump can say for either one of them that will change their mind.
She says she usually votes Democrat and that now, her vote is guided by what she wants the future to look like for their 5-year-old son, Solomon.
“I’m very concerned about him in the future (being) a minority male. That’s something that’s just always on my mind,” Keisha Mosqueda says.
Solomon might not yet understand the importance or effect of his parents votes could have in Georgia, but what does know is the color he plans to vote for.
“Blue,” Solomon says.
