ATLANTA — Donald Trump is a brash New Yorker who knows the path to the Republican presidential nomination runs through a swath of Southern states where residents pride themselves on graciousness and gentility.

He leads many state polls in the region just as he does nationally. In the last few weeks he’s hired staff members in Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia to go along with staff in South Carolina, which hosts the South’s first primary.

“It’s almost like we’re running a campaign for president of the United States,” quipped Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski when asked about the expansion.

Lewandowski said the hires and Trump’s schedule — he’ll be in metro Atlanta on Saturday — are proof that Trump is in the race for good. Trump and his aides are pushing back on suggestions — fueled by his own comments — that he is plotting an exit in case his poll numbers continue to slide, as they have recently.

Lewandowski and political players in the South say Trump shouldn’t be taken lightly in the region, even if it may not seem like a natural fit.

“Look, the idea that only Southerners appeal to Southerners and Northerners appeal to Northerners is overdone,” said David Mowery, an Alabama-based consultant. “He may not sound like us, but he’s saying the things that people in the Republican base — and even disaffected, frustrated voters outside that base — want to hear.”

South Carolina is accustomed to its place immediately after Iowa and New Hampshire. But the rest of the South is enjoying a newfound prominence in the nominating process, driven by Georgia and others moving up for a March 1 Super Tuesday dubbed the “the SEC primary” after the college athletics league. Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Virginia will have 471 delegates at stake that day. Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina and Florida follow in the next two weeks with a combined 301 delegates.

Among the Southern states voting in March, only Florida is winner-take-all, with the rest using varying proportional distributions of delegates. That means the region won’t put any single candidate on the cusp of the necessary 1,236 delegates necessary for nomination. But it will winnow the field.