Harris to barnstorm through Georgia in effort to put state back in play
Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz will travel across South Georgia on Wednesday, the pair’s second bus tour in two weeks and the first burst of campaigning since the Democratic National Convention ended last Thursday.
The tour, which will end with a Harris rally in Savannah on Thursday, is the campaign’s latest effort to compete in Georgia, which has become a particularly critical battleground in the month since President Joe Biden dropped out of the race.
It also reflects Harris’s effort to go beyond large urban areas to court votes in suburban and rural communities, a strategy that reflects the growing importance of boosting turnout in Democratic strongholds while holding down margins in traditionally Republican counties, said Andra Gillespie, a political science professor at Emory University in Atlanta.
“You cannot neglect the southern part of the state of Georgia and think you can win,” she said. “You have to run up high margins in traditionally Democratic areas like Atlanta, and you also have to hold your own in traditionally Republican areas, recognizing that there are Democrats everywhere in the state.”
Harris’s campaign has not said specifically where she and Walz will travel during the tour, but aides said their visit would showcase the diversity of the state.
“Campaigning in this part of the Peach State is critical as it represents a diverse coalition of voters, including rural, suburban, and urban Georgians — with a large proportion of Black voters and working class families,” the campaign said in a statement announcing the tour.
Biden narrowly won the state in 2020, becoming the first Democrat to do so since Bill Clinton in 1992. But many Democrats had privately given up on the idea of carrying the state in November, with polls showing former president Donald Trump with a consistent lead over Biden in the state. Those same polls have largely shifted in Democrats’ favor since Harris entered the race, and the party is investing more time and resources in Georgia as it attempts to block Trump’s potential pathways to 270 electoral votes. The Washington Post’s polling average has Trump leading in Georgia by three percentage points.
Both Democrats and Republicans have focused on Georgia in recent weeks, as Trump and Harris each see its 16 electoral votes as crucial for most paths to victory.
Harris traveled to Atlanta last month for a rally that featured rappers Megan Thee Stallion and Quavo, drawing more than 10,000 people.
“I am very clear: The path to the White House runs right through this state,” Harris said at the event. “You all helped us win in 2020, and we’re going to do it again in 2024.”
Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, held a rally a few days later in the same venue, speaking to a near-capacity crowd.
The bus tour is expected to feature more intimate settings and smaller groups, following the template Harris and Walz set while traveling through Western Pennsylvania on Aug. 18.
During that swing, Harris and Walz greeted supporters at an airport hangar, dropped in on a high school football practice, handed out baked goods to firefighters, met with volunteers and made campaign phone calls. The trip took them to Allegheny County, home to Pittsburgh and a large cache of Democratic voters, as well as Beaver County, a more Republican-leaning area that Trump carried in 2020.
Vance visited Valdosta in South Georgia on Thursday, calling the state “one of the most important” to the outcome of the election.
“Kamala Harris wants to take San Francisco liberalism nationwide and I think we’re not going to let her,” he said as he met with local law enforcement at an event focused on crime and the border. “Georgia is not going to let her, and I think it starts right here in Valdosta.”
During the Democratic National Convention, Harris’s campaign sought to court Republican voters, giving a speaking slot to Georgia’s former lieutenant governor, Geoff Duncan.
Duncan, who clashed with Trump over the former president’s efforts to overturn the election results in 2020, used his speech to urge his fellow Republicans to “dump Trump.”
“If you vote for Harris in 2024, you are not a Democrat,” he said. “You are a patriot.”
Harris will need the support of some moderate and conservative voters to win the state of Georgia, where Republicans outnumber Democrats, Gillespie said. Going on a bus tour outside of Atlanta’s metropolitan area is one way to try to reach some of those voters, she said.
“Democrats are competitive because there are now more Democrats than there used to be and also because there is a subset of Republicans who are not prepared to vote for a particularly compromised Republican opponent,” she said. “Demographically speaking, this is a play for those conflicted voters.”