Georgia is on Harris' mind: VP looks to win over voters in first post-convention stop

WASHINGTON – Vice President Kamala Harris is channeling her post-convention momentum into winning over voters in Georgia, where she had been running several points behind former President Donald Trump, as her campaign fights to keep the state in its electoral count.

Harris embarks on a two-day bus tour through southeast Georgia on Wednesday that ends with a rally in Savannah, an area that activists in the state had warned President Joe Biden he needed to shore up support in before he dropped out.

Democrats are feeling more bullish with Harris as the nominee after worrying that the relatively new battleground state was slipping away.

“It is a place that we are competing in aggressively because we think it is in play and could very well be decisive,” said Dan Kanninen, battleground states director of the Harris-Walz campaign.

The playbook: drive out turnout in Democratic-leaning Atlanta and minimize Trump’s support in rural parts of the state. Harris’ campaign also believes it can cut into Trump’s margins with independent men and Republican women in Georgia. Reaching Black voters, men in particular, have also been a focus.

Georgia is one of seven states that Harris’ campaign has been targeting. Her campaign has 24 offices and more than 190 staffers in the state – more than double the number the Biden campaign had four years ago when much of the campaigning was taking place virtually.

It is also investing heavily in nearby North Carolina, the western battlegrounds of Arizona and Nevada and the labor-heavy states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.

So far, Harris has had the money to compete in them all. She’s raised more than $540 million since taking over for Biden, a record-setting amount that has allowed her to spend $150 million on paid advertising this month.

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Coming off Labor Day and the Sept. 10 debate, however, Harris will have to make tough calls. A candidate’s time is their most valuable resource, as the adage goes, and with fewer than 10 weeks until the election, Harris’ is dwindling down.

Civil rights activists in the state are also imploring Harris not to write off Georgia and its growing population of eligible Black voters if and when she eventually does.

“If you give up on Georgia, and you give up on the South, then you give up on your campaign,” said Georgia NAACP president Gerald Griggs, a civil rights attorney.

Harris was further behind Trump in Georgia than she was in any other battleground state besides Arizona heading into the convention. Among likely voters, she trailed Trump by four points in August in a New York Times/Siena poll, which was almost the same as the margin of error.

Polling has been scant ever since but CBS News’ battleground tracker shows her tied with Trump in Georgia and Pennsylvania, a point behind in North Carolina, and leading in the other four.

Harris chose to lay out her economic vision in Raleigh, North Carolina, several days before the start of the convention and has paid as much attention in recent weeks to the state Democrats have not won in more than a decade as she has to Georgia, where Trump was indicted and charged with trying to overturn the results of the election.

Georgia destined to be close

Her campaign says it’s not planning to jump ship in any of the states it has identified as battlegrounds, including Georgia. It launched leadership teams in those states at the start of this year, while Republicans were mired in a primary, and started opening offices in March.

“We see it as a state that is destined to be very, very close,” Kanninen said in an interview. “It is one of the central tossup states that we're tracking, but we do feel good about the fact that, despite that, it will be tight and close and a challenge.”

Georgia was home to one of her first rallies after Biden quit the race – a concert in the Atlanta area with Megan Thee Stallion. Until this week, she had not been back. She canceled visits to both Georgia and North Carolina as part of her battleground state tour due to a tropical storm, her campaign said. She has since rescheduled both stops.

“I believe that she’ll win Georgia actually,” said Steve Benjamin, a former Columbia, South Carolina, mayor who’s the director of the White House office of public engagement. “The energy that’s on the ground is just amazing and powerful.”

He pointed to turnout at rallies for Harris and the diverse crowds she has been drawing. “I firmly believe that Black women, who are excited and enthused, and Black men as well understand… this amazing opportunity to select the very best person and most prepared person for this job that the time is right now.”

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Harris’ campaign says it sees as much enthusiasm on the ground now as it did when Biden and Harris notched a surprise victory there four years ago. More than 1,000 people signed up to volunteer after her Atlanta rally, the campaign said.

Back then two Senate seats were on the ballot, and Democrats in the state were buoyed by the prospect of electing their first Jewish and Black senators, the first female, Black and Asian vice president, and winning a majority in the U.S. Senate.

Sen. Raphael Warnock won that special election, and a runoff, his regularly scheduled Senate race two years later, and another runoff election in 2022. His races helped Harris’ campaign form a blueprint to win statewide.

“We used to say message, money and manpower, but she’s got womanpower as well,” Benjamin said.

Black voters are responsible for delivering Biden and Harris the election in Georgia in 2020, and activists who have been part of organizing efforts this year, say they are primed to turn out for vice president and her running mate.

“Nothing's a lost cause until people start voting. Polls are just a snapshot of time,” Melanie Campbell, a civil rights activist and convenor of the Black Women’s Roundtable, said of Harris’ prospects in Georgia.

Georgia voters could begin requesting absentee ballots earlier this month, on Aug 19. The first day they will be sent is on Oct. 7, according to the Georgia secretary of state’s office.

Looking beyond Atlanta

Harris has visited Georgia seven times this year, including during her bus tour. Most of her trips have been to Atlanta. Two have been to Savannah.

Democrats have long said that to win the state, the ticket also needed to appeal to Black voters in the central and southern areas, including Macon and Valdosta.

The state has 2.6 million Black eligible voters, according to a 2022 Pew Research Center survey – the most of any other state besides Texas, at 2.9 million and Florida, also 2.6 million.

On previous visits, Harris has emphasized reproductive rights and the economy.

“She needs to speak to how she's going to protect voting rights, how she's going to address police accountability, and how she's going to change the future of millions of Americans, particularly millions of Georgians, in a way fitting of the civil rights legacy of this state,” Griggs said.

Harris needs to explain how she will get the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act passed, he said, get Black farmers the money they are owed and forgive student loan debt, in addition to laying out her economic plans.

“Those are just a few of the things she needs to give specific policy milestones and markers of how she's going to achieve those things,” Griggs said. “I think if she does that, then she will ignite a large base here in Georgia that will turn out the vote.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Georgia may be back in play for Democrats as Harris takes on Trump