SAVANNAH, Georgia – Vice President Kamala Harris woke up Thursday in this historic coastal Georgia city, a key battleground in the presidential election and one of seven states that will likely determine the winner of her 2024 matchup against former President Trump.
The vice president, accompanied by his running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, began a two-day bus trip on Wednesday through southeast Georgia, visiting with high school faculty and students before stopping at a barbecue joint.
On Thursday, Ms. Harris and Mr. Walz are scheduled to give their first major interviews before the vice president is expected to hold a large rally in Savannah.
By choosing the Peach State as her first campaign stop following last week's Democratic National Convention, Harris is making a statement that Georgia will once again be a hotbed of contention in November's election.
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Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during a visit to Sandfly BBQ in Savannah, Georgia, Wednesday, Aug. 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Jacqueline Martin) (AP Photo/Jacqueline Martin)
Georgia was a reliably Republican state in White House elections until 2020, when President Biden narrowly defeated then-President Trump to become the first Democratic candidate to win the state in nearly three decades.
Fast forward to this year's election, and Trump had a slight lead over Biden in Georgia polls, but after the president's dismal performance in the only debate, held in Atlanta in late June, Biden's lead surged to single digits.
The popular Republican governor has said his state is a must-win for Trump.
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.
A Fox News poll conducted in Georgia from Aug. 23-26 and released Wednesday showed Harris leading Trump by a narrow margin, 50% to 48%, among registered voters. Fox News' most recent poll in Georgia before Biden dropped out of the race showed Trump leading by six points, 51% to 45%.
Georgia's popular conservative governor agrees that the state is highly competitive.
“This is certainly a battleground state,” Gov. Brian Kemp emphasized in an interview with Fox News Digital on Tuesday.
Georgia Republican Governor Brian Kemp is interviewed by Fox News Digital on June 3, 2024 in Chalmette, Louisiana. (Fox News – Paul Steinhauser)
“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.”
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The same is true for the Democratic Party.
“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.
Democratic presidential candidate and Vice President Kamala Harris poses for a photo with Savannah State University students at Savannah-Hilton Head International Airport on August 28, 2024 in Savannah, Georgia. (AP Photo/Jacqueline Martin)
This will be Harris' second visit to Georgia since replacing Biden as the party's standard-bearer. 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.
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.
Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris addresses members of the marching band at Liberty County High School in Hinesville, Georgia, Wednesday, Aug. 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Jacqueline Martin) (AP Photo/Jacqueline Martin)
Harris and Waltz's first stop was Liberty County High School in Hinesville, where they met with administrators, faculty and students and stopped by a rehearsal of the school's marching band.
“I wanted to come here to let you know that this country is counting on all of you,” Harris told the students. “We are so proud of you. Your generation and all that you represent is what will propel our country into the next era of what we can do and what we can become.”
According to the investigation report, the vice president told students he was in a band when he was in high school.
The Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee attacked Harris as her bus tour began.
“The Trump campaign is fighting and winning in Georgia by building a broad base of support from people who are tired of four years of failure in the White House,” senior adviser Brian Hughes told Fox News.
Republican National Committee spokesperson Morgan Ackley also argued that while “our very intense and energetic work in Georgia is focused on increasing voter turnout across the state, Georgia Democrats have finally learned an important lesson…There is more to Georgia than Atlanta.”
“Republicans from Catoosa County to Camden County and everywhere in between are excited and ready to run for the re-election of President Donald J. Trump because his message of putting America First once again resonates with Americans of all backgrounds,” Ackley emphasized.
But 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 Georgia.
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)
In the two years since his narrow loss in Georgia to Biden in the 2020 presidential election, Trump has attacked Kemp for failing to overturn the state's election results.
Trump toned down his criticism of Kemp after he defeated former Sen. David Perdue, a Trump-backed former senator, in the 2022 Republican gubernatorial primary.
And earlier this month, Trump delivered a 10-minute tirade against Kemp at a rally in Atlanta, just blocks from the Georgia Capitol, where he criticized the governor not only for failing to overturn the 2020 vote but also for not blocking a county prosecutor from indicting the former president for trying to overturn the election results.
But last week, President Trump made a dramatic about-face, praising Governor Kemp in social media posts and attempting to repair their differences.
“I've been consistent over the last few years in saying that I will support the candidate in Georgia whoever the nominee is, and that's exactly what I'm doing and that's exactly what I've done,” Kemp told Fox News Digital.
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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.”
Another sign of how important Georgia is in determining the outcome of the White House race is that both the Harris and Trump campaigns are spending huge amounts of money advertising in the state.
The Trump campaign has spent about $33 million to secure last-minute ad slots on Georgia stations, while the Harris campaign has spent more than $42 million.
Steven Lawson, a veteran Georgia-based Republican consultant, noted the bet, saying, “From the Trump-Kemp détente to Harris' campaigning in rural Georgia to the big spending, they continue to emphasize that the road to the White House runs through Georgia.”
“That's what happened in 2020, and that's why Joe Biden is now in office,” Lawson emphasized.
Looking ahead to this fall's presidential election, he added, “I think it will be very difficult for either Harris or Trump to win the White House without winning Georgia.”
Get the latest 2024 campaign updates, exclusive interviews and more on Fox News Digital's Election Hub.
