SAVANNAH, Ga. — Vice President Kamala Harris appears to be trying to send a message by choosing Georgia as her first campaign stop following last week's Democratic National Convention.
Harris on Wednesday began a two-day bus tour of key southeastern battleground states with her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.
Walz is heading to North Carolina for a fundraiser on Thursday night, while Harris plans to “energize thousands of Georgians at a rally in Savannah,” her campaign said.
The vice president's message is that Georgia will once again be a hot topic in the November election.
The popular Republican governor has said his state is a must-win for Trump.
Vice President Kamala Harris addresses the crowd at a presidential campaign rally in Atlanta on July 30, 2024. (Kyle Mazza/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Georgia has long been a reliably Republican state in elections for the White House, and Joe Biden narrowly defeated then-President Trump in 2020, becoming the first Democrat to win Georgia in nearly three decades.
Fast forward to this year's election, and polls in Georgia had Trump with a slight lead over Biden, but that lead grew to a solid single-digit lead after the president's disastrous performance in the only debate, held in Atlanta in late June.
But five and a half weeks after the vice president replaced his boss as the top 2024 Democratic candidate, polls show the race in the Peach State is again within the margin of error.
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Georgia's popular conservative governor agrees.
“This is certainly a battleground state,” Gov. Brian Kemp emphasized in an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital on Tuesday.
“I have long said the path to the White House would run through Georgia, and there is no path for former President Trump to win or for any Republican candidate to reach 270 seats without Georgia,” Kemp said.
But he added, “If we put all the necessary mechanisms in place, Georgia should be a state we can win. I'm working hard to provide those mechanisms in a variety of ways, to turn out the Republican vote and win this state in November.”
See the latest Fox News poll for the 2024 election here
The same is true for the Democratic Party.
Democratic presidential candidate and Vice President Kamala Harris poses for a photo with supporters at Savannah-Hilton Head International Airport on August 28, 2024 in Savannah, Georgia. (AP Photo/Jacqueline Martin)
“The Georgia Democratic Coordination Campaign is conducting the largest in-state operation of any Democratic presidential campaign cycle with more than 190 Democratic Coordination Campaign staffers located in 24 coordinating offices across the state,” the Harris campaign touted just hours before the vice president's arrival in Savannah.
This will be Harris' second visit to Georgia since taking over as the party's standard-bearer from Biden. She previously hosted a large rally in downtown Atlanta.
But this time, Ms. Harris is touring the southern part of Georgia, far from Atlanta and its suburbs, which account for about 60% of the state's population, and the traditional way for Democrats to win statewide is to focus on the greater Atlanta metropolitan area.
Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at a campaign rally in Atlanta on July 30, 2024. (AP Photo/John Bazemore)
But Quentin Fulks, who served as Biden's chief deputy campaign manager and remains in that role under Harris, is sticking with the strategy he used two years ago to lead Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock to a narrow reelection victory over Republican Herschel Walker: win big in Atlanta and its suburbs but also stay competitive in the rest of the state.
“We've got to make sure we're competing statewide,” Fulks said in an interview on MSNBC on Tuesday. “We're going to continue to campaign in rural counties. … We've got to work across that state and compete in counties that Democrats don't traditionally go to. That's how you win statewide in Georgia.”
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“Our campaign in southeast Georgia is critical because we represent a diverse coalition of voters that includes rural, suburban and urban Georgians, and is comprised of a large proportion of Black voters and working-class families,” the Harris campaign said in a statement.
The Harris campaign appears to have a significant organizational advantage over the Trump campaign in Georgia, and GOP strategists agree that Trump will need the support of Kemp's well-functioning and well-funded political organization to mobilize Republican voters to retake the state.
Former President Trump (right) with his running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, during a campaign rally at Georgia State University in Atlanta on August 3, 2024. (AP Photo/John Bazemore)
Trump last week praised Kemp for his efforts to repair differences he and the Georgia governor have had since the 2020 election.
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Kemp is scheduled to appear in Atlanta on Thursday at a fundraiser for the former president with his wife, Georgia First Lady Marty Kemp, and Mike Pompeo, who served as secretary of state in the Trump administration.
“I don't believe we can afford Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, or Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, to have four more years in power, and we'd probably end up worse off than we would have with Biden and Harris,” the governor argued.
“I believe Republicans need to focus on the record of Kamala Harris and Joe Biden. … We need to tell people why they should vote for us and what we're going to do to make it better than it is.”
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