Harris Launches Swing-State Georgia Bus Tour to Boost Pitch
(Bloomberg) -- Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris kicked off a bus tour through swing-state Georgia, seeking to extend her campaign’s outreach in a critical battleground for November’s election.
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Harris, accompanied by her running mate Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, is traveling through the southeast part of the state, with an eye to courting Black voters, people in rural communities and disaffected Republicans with qualms about backing their party’s nominee, former President Donald Trump.
Those groups could be critical to helping the Democratic ticket hold on to Georgia, a state President Joe Biden won in 2020 by less than a quarter of a percentage point and where Trump is accused of leading a conspiracy to stay in office after losing the election.
Harris and Walz made a stop at Liberty County High School in Hinesville, where they were greeted by a band playing the school’s fight song.
The candidates spoke to a small gathering of band members, football players, and cheerleaders, largely forgoing political talk to instead praise the students.
“Your generation, all that you guys stand for, everything you have at stake is what’s going to propel our country into the next era,” Harris said.
Later, the pair stopped at Sandfly Bar-B-Q in Savannah, snapping selfies with diners and chatting about economic conditions. Walz noted that some small businesses were struggling to hire workers.
“Politicians brag about low unemployment rates but it’s hard,” he said.
The stops and the bus tour are ground in hard political realities. The town Harris visited, more than 200 miles outside Atlanta, the state’s economic powerhouse and home to several major international companies, is the type of community where Democrats will need to court voters to bolster their chances of carrying the state.
Central to Harris’ efforts on this trip will be her economic agenda, with the administration’s handling of the post-pandemic economy and high inflation defining issues in the 2024 contest. Harris has sought to counter the poor marks voters give Biden over the economy by pitching measures aimed at helping curb costs for US households, including programs to limit increases in rent and grocery prices, aid for first-time homebuyers and expanded tax credits.
The two-day campaign swing with Walz is Harris’ first since the Democratic National Convention last week and as she prepares for her first major interview since entering the race — a sitdown that will air Thursday on CNN. Harris is seeking to capitalize on momentum that has seen her rise in the polls and overtake Trump in the money race in part by sharper attacks from her campaign team on the former president.
Harris’ campaign released an ad Wednesday that hits Trump over Project 2025, a detailed blueprint of policy options for a potential second administration assembled by many of his closest allies. Democrats have made it a centerpiece of their attacks, casting the agenda as too extreme for voters. Trump has sought to distance himself from the initiative, insisting that he knew nothing about it despite the involvement of many former aides and advisers from his White House term.
Competitive State
Georgia has reemerged as a key state in the presidential contest with a Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll from July showing Harris and Trump both with 47% of the vote there — part of a broader rebound in the polls for Democrats after Biden’s exit from the race.
The bus tour is shaping up to be a critical test of Harris’ messaging, coming as many in the party are expressing concerns that while her campaign has galvanized Black women voters, more outreach must be directed toward ensuring that Black men also rally behind her. Polls show Black men are more open to backing Trump, fueled partly by concerns over the Biden-Harris administration’s handling of the economy and inflation which has hammered US households.
Black voters comprise about a third of the electorate in Georgia, which has the highest share of those voters among the core battleground states. Last week’s Democratic National Convention included sessions focused on how the party can boost its outreach to Black men in particular.
Earlier: Democrats Stronger in Sun Belt Under Harris, Campaign Aide Says
Harris is also eager to bolster the ticket’s appeal to rural voters — a segment of the vote where Republicans typically dominate the voting returns — rather than just relying on turning out the base in big cities such as Atlanta. Walz, who was born in rural Nebraska, is seen as a running mate who can help with that pitch.
“I think we have to cut margins a little bit in rural America,” Dan Kanninen, the Harris campaign’s battleground states director, said last week, suggesting Democrats had wrongly assumed their message would not find a receptive audience in those communities.
“That assumption, I think, has been a bad one for us in the past, and all of the sudden you lose counties 80-20, instead of 60-40. So we have to show up in those places.”
The Democratic convention in Chicago also included overtures to disaffected Republicans, including a speech by former Georgia Lieutenant Governor Geoff Duncan, a Trump critic.
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