CAIRO — The GOP nominee in this fall’s election for the 2nd Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives says America is in a “life or death struggle” with agents of chaos, and the only way to win is by electing Republicans across the ballot.

America is under attack from within by “intentional anarchists,” said Republican candidate Don Cole, and his prescription is to get “back to basics” by reaffirming a commitment to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

“We need to elect Donald Trump,” Cole said at Monday night’s grand opening of the Grady County Republican Party’s new Broad Street headquarters. “We need to elect Republicans right on down the row.”

Cole, a former speechwriter for Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue who is taking on 14-term U.S. Rep. Sanford Bishop in November’s election, said Democrats are undertaking an organized effort to “dampen the vote” this fall by sowing confusion and creating unnecessary hurdles for voters to overcome. He compared tactics currently used by the Left to those used in the George Orwell book “Animal Farm,” which details the devolution of an animal-run farm into a totalitarian state.

“I just read it before the COVID virus broke out, and I saw things that are happening here,” he said. “The anarchy, the chaos that’s going on — these are not things that are just rising up from angry people. There are some out there, the protests might be, but these are designed for a purpose of creating anarchy.”

At stake this fall are religious liberties and the right to bear arms, Cole told the more than 40 people in attendance. The Barnesville native who spent four years in the Army said that if presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden win the election this fall that unelected bureaucrats will pump out regulations to diminish the power of the Second Amendment, and that Americans’ religious liberties would likely be next.

“This isn’t a matter of Republican or Democrat, it’s a matter of our nation,” Cole said. “When it comes down to it, it’s really us, our values — not Republicans — our values against Washington. It’s against the people up there who look down their nose at us down here.”

In Cole’s view, liberals seized upon the COVID-19 pandemic to wreck a healthy economy by taking the unprecedented step of shuttering businesses for weeks. Initial goals of “flattening the curve” and increasing hospital capacity were set aside as Democrats took on increasingly rigorous standards for reopening the economy and then used the opportunity to attack Trump and Governor Brian Kemp for their efforts to keep the nation afloat.

Trump was in the process of undoing needless regulations former President Barack Obama had imposed on the economy before the pandemic, Cole said, and while the former Baptist preacher predicted that the economy will eventually return to its former heights, he said the first step should be in removing Bishop from Congress. Cole said Bishop, who has represented the sprawling district that encompasses all or part of 29 counties in the southwest corner of the state since 1993, is more beholden to interests in Washington than the people he was elected to serve.

“He’s gotten real comfortable up there where he is,” Cole said.

“For 30 years he’s talked about the same problems, he’s blamed the same party and the same people over and over and over again and we don’t see any difference.”

Cole knocked Bishop for having a 0 percent rating with the National Right to Life Committee while boasting a 100 percent grade from Planned Parenthood, but he saved some of his harshest criticism for the congressman in his comments about farmers in the 2nd District. Cole said Bishop chose to stand with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in prioritizing aid for Puerto Rico over farmers in his own district who were the “ground zero” victims of Hurricane Michael.

“We had already given millions to Puerto Rico,” Cole said. “Don’t be playing games with this. Help out our farmers.”

Even if Bishop was incapable of swaying Pelosi, Cole said the 27-year House veteran should have made a better effort of communicating with his constituents.

“By God, he could have said something,” Cole said. “He could have been speaking up. He could have been going to Nancy Pelosi. He could have been putting out press releases and saying ‘these are my people.’”

After previously considering running for Congress back in 2010, only to back out after Mike Keown, the GOP’s eventual nominee that year, declared his intentions to run for office, Cole said he was left without a choice in 2020 after Bishop voted to impeach Trump earlier this year. Cole excoriated Bishop for the vote, claiming he knows “dozens if not a hundred” people who personally implored the Albany Democrat not to support impeachment.

“He did it anyway,” Cole said. “He ignored what the people of the 2nd District were saying. He listened to Nancy Pelosi as he has done all along.”

Matters were made worse when Bishop shared a whistleblower report that Cole saw as damaging to the president but did nothing to promote the transcript of a phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelensky that the candidate said would have been exculpatory.

Cole wasn’t the only GOP candidate to visit the new headquarters. Kandiss Taylor, one of six Republicans running in a jungle primary this fall to fill the U.S. Senate seat vacated last year by Johnny Isakson, swung by Cairo over the weekend to view the new location.

Other figures present at Monday night’s ceremony were state Representative Darlene Taylor, who encouraged others to vote in the upcoming election; Republican sheriff candidates Harry Young and Steve Clark; county Commissioner June Knight, who herself is a Republican facing a competitive contest this fall and representatives from Trump’s reelection campaign, who have set up a field office in the new headquarters.

Grady County’s Republican Party has never had a permanent headquarters before, and party chair Jeff Jolly said he plans to use the space to help organize campaigns, host debate watch parties and let candidates meet with others, but the first order of business is to elect Cole.

“They say Sanford is unbeatable — no, he’s not,” Jolly said. “We can do it, but we have got to help raise this man some money so he can get on television and radio and do mail outs, newspaper ads. Whatever it takes, we’ve got to raise the money.”