Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Waltz will embark on a bus tour of southern Georgia next week, the first time the pair will campaign together in the state and their first public event since the Democratic convention in Chicago starting today.
The ticket will use the momentum from the party’s convention to carry them into the final few months of the general election. In addition to the bus tour, Harris and Waltz are expected to tape their first joint interview next week and attend multiple fundraisers in New York, California, Florida and Georgia, according to two sources familiar with the planning.
After the tour, Harris will headline a solo rally in Savannah, Georgia. The visit will be Harris’ seventh visit to the state this year and his second since launching his presidential campaign last month.
“The campaign in this part of the Peach State is very important because it represents a diverse coalition of voters, including rural, suburban and urban Georgians, with many black voters and working-class families,” the Harris-Walz campaign said. leave by announcing the bus tour.
Harris and Walz’s visit comes as the Republican ticket ramps up its campaign in the state. Vice presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance of Ohio campaigned in Valdosta on Thursday after former President Donald Trump’s rally in Atlanta earlier this month. Republicans have also tried to capitalize on polls that show the party could win a larger share of Black and Latino voters this election cycle.
The South Georgia bus tour is expected to coincide with the campaign’s western Pennsylvania bus tour earlier this month, which will include stops at a local campaign field office, a fire station and a high school football practice.
Harris and Walz originally planned to visit Savannah earlier this month during the campaign’s battleground state-by-state tour, but had to postpone the event due to Tropical Storm Debbie.
While it’s unclear where Harris and Walz will go, South Georgia is home to the state’s largest black population, including Dougherty County, which has the second-highest percentage of blacks in the state. The campaign opened field offices in the predominantly Black cities of Albany and Valdosta.
“The South Georgia region is a priority for the campaign: we have about 50 full-time employees in 7 offices in the area, including Valdosta. Since May 31, we have hosted more than 500 events in the region,” said Adelaide Bullock, spokeswoman for the Harris-Walz Georgia campaign.
Ranada Robinson, director of research at the New Georgia Project Fund, said reaching out to black voters in both rural and urban areas will be as critical to Harris’ success in the state as it is to Biden’s victory in 2020.
“Black voters are the key to winning Georgia. Of course, black Georgians cannot do it alone, but we are the cause of 2020 being like this,” he said. “There was a historic turnout of black voters, and it must happen again in order to win in Georgia.”
Earlier this month, Harris held his second presidential campaign rally in Atlanta, featuring Megan Thee Stallion; the campaign said it attracted more than 10,000 people.
It then launched statewide mobilization efforts and now has nearly 400,000 volunteers, 174 staff and 24 coordinated campaign offices spread across Georgia. The campaign refers to the ground game there as “the largest in-state operation of any Democratic presidential campaign in Georgia to date.”
Harris campaign chairwoman Jen O’Malley Dillon identified Georgia as one of the campaign’s top targets, citing changing demographics that could help the vice president expand support from 2020.
“The Vice President’s strengths with young voters, black voters and Latino voters will be important to our many ways to reach the 270 electoral votes,” Dillon said in a recent memo.
Harris and Walsh are expected to take the battleground states by storm around Labor Day before Harris focuses more time on debate preparation ahead of his September matchup with Trump.
A Trump adviser said the campaign was waiting for Harris will receive a “bump”. Departing from convention, however, likening it to a “sugar high”, he said they didn’t believe it would change the overall state of the race.