Black lawmaker Mesha Mainor who defected from Democrats to join Republicans says the African-American vote has been taken for granted for 50 YEARS as evidence grows that Biden's support is collapsing

'No one ever tells us what the Democrat platform is or what the Republican platform is,' said Georgia state Rep. Mesha Mainor in her cramped office. 

'They just say you're a Democrat. And this is how you vote.'

That was not good enough for Mainor, an African-American in a state where the Black vote powered Joe Biden to Georgia's 16 electoral college votes in 2020.

Earlier this year the woman elected as a Democrat in 2020 did the unthinkable, crossing the aisle to become the only Black Republican in the state legislature.

Her decision was driven by failing schools, the need for better security on the streets of Atlanta, and a growing sense that Democrats were not acting in the best interests of her Black constituents.

The switch triggered a rapid backlash, including a torrent of online abuse from people telling her to kill herself or making reference to 'Aunt Jemima.'

But during an interview with DailyMail.com she said she was confident that she could win reelection as a Republican in a largely Black and impoverished district. 

Her town hall events have become busier since she switched, she added, suggesting that she was in step with her voters and a growing mistrust of Democrats.

'I feel like the story is going to be especially among minority voters that we've been listening to you guys for 50 years,' she said. 

'You can't keep telling us one more law that we're gonna believe. We're done. 

'And I'm just the first Black Republican in metro Atlanta that has ever been in a position like this.'

Georgia's Black voters could be key not just to how the state awards its electoral college votes, they could decide who wins the White House in 2024.

They make up about a third of the electorate in of the tightest battleground states.

In 2016 Georgia went for Trump before flipping to Joe Biden by just 0.2. percent of the vote.

Exit polls show he won it with 88 percent of the Black vote.

This time around he might have to find votes elsewhere. A poll of 550 likely voters in the state for Dailymail.com found that Biden has the support of 54 percent of Black respondents, while Trump has 16 percent.

The sample size is small and does not have the sort of statistical weight to allow firm conclusions. 

However, it reflects other polls that show Trump is making inroads with a bloc that helped Biden to victory in 2020.

A recent New York Times and Siena College showed in a head-to-head contest, 22 percent of Black voters in six battleground states would support Trump.

Mainor said it was only recently that she began to rethink what she had learned about politics growing up. 

'It wasn't until I got elected, and was actually reading the legislation and I was going to the Democrat leadership saying this does not help Black people ... this does not help my community,' she said.

One of the flashpoint issues was 'school choice,' in a city where children are falling way below expected levels of literacy. Only 32 percent of Georgia fourth graders were proficient in reading in 2022, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

Mainor, a graduate of Washington, D.C.'s Howard University, knew the importance of education from an early age. Her mother made sure she got a leg up, using someone else's address to enable her daughter to avoid the local failing school in favor of a better place in a more affluent neighborhood.

The solution for another generation of children, said Mainor, was to use state and federal cash for vouchers that parents at the worst performing public schools could use to access private schools. 

But Senate Bill 233, which would have paid $6000 per student to schools, was killed off in Georgia Assembly's last legislative session by Democratic opposition. 

Critics said it would take money out of the public school system to help those who could already afford to pick up part of a private school bill. 

Mainor said the reasoning was wrong. 

'It actually doesn't even matter how you get to the opportunity. What matters is how fast you can give them the opportunity,' she said. 

'So the Democrats prefer to say, let's wait and fix the broken system. 

'Well, I'm almost 50. And the system has been broken for over 50 years. So how much more waiting do you want?'

Another flashpoint was bill setting up an oversight panel for prosecutors.

Democrats opposed the measure, which they said was intended by Republicans to rein in Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and her prosecution of Trump for fighting the 2020 election result. 

'It wasn't about Donald Trump,' said Mainor.

When she was the victim of a stalker, she discovered that the prosecutor in the case was friends with the defendant's attorney. It was the sort of thing that greater oversight might have prevented, she said.

Corwin Monson, a former campaign volunteer, was sentenced to a year in prison and two years of probation in 2021.

Getting tougher on prosecutors, she added, would also improve the prosecution rate of police officers in fatal shootings, which is a huge issue for the Black population.

'This bill is about prosecutors that don't do their job,' she said.

In 2021, she was also one of only three Democrats in the state House to support a G.O.P. bill to curb the powers of counties to reduce funding for the police.

Over time she became isolated within her party.  

'It was stressful. I would walk into rooms with Democrats and they rolled their eyes at me,' she said. 'They would literally be in my face pointing their fingers in my face.'

She announced he switch of July 11, saying that she had been forced out by colleagues for they way she questioned policies taken as articles of faith by the rest of the caucus.

That should be a lesson to Democrats, she said, if they wanted to keep hold of Georgia's electoral college in the presidential election next year.

'I think Democrats are not listening to voters. I think they're listening to themselves,' she said. 

'And they're gonna lose because whoever is actually listening to them, whoever is actually listening to voters, is who is gonna get their vote.'