During the first whirlwind week of her second presidential campaign, Kamala Harris locked up the support of the Democratic Party, recruited thousands of volunteers and hauled in $200 million in donations.
But the challenge over the next 98 days will be whether she can harness that energy to power electoral victories in both traditional party strongholds and the newer battlegrounds that had appeared to be slipping away under President Joe Biden.
The latest test of Harris’ appeal took place Tuesday in Georgia, where she held a rally in Atlanta with nearly 10,000 attendees, according to her campaign. The vice president was joined by Democratic Sens. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, two-time Democratic gubernatorial nominee Stacey Abrams and rappers Megan Thee Stallion and Quavo.
“I am very clear: The path to the White House runs right though this state,” Harris told the crowd.
That Harris would make a high-profile visit to Georgia early in her White House bid indicates the renewed push the campaign is making in a state that’s now back in play for Democrats.
Any Democratic path to victory almost certainly runs through the so-called “Blue Wall” states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, where polls showed a tied race between former President Donald Trump and his then-Democratic opponent, Biden, for months. But, with Harris now the party’s presumptive nominee, keeping Sun Belt states like Georgia – as well as Arizona, Nevada and North Carolina – competitive could give Democrats much needed breathing room.
Democrats became disillusioned months ago with the prospect of winning in Georgia, according to party strategists involved in conversations. Frustrations over inflation and the suffering in Gaza were mounting among voters, whose turnout was becoming increasingly uncertain. A mid-May commencement address by Biden at Morehouse College was marked by drama around the possibility of protests over his handling of the war in Gaza.
Following the presidential debate in Atlanta in late June, Biden flew directly to North Carolina to rally voters there, a decision that sources involved suggested was rooted in the greater likelihood at that point of flipping the Tar Heel State – with its heavily college-educated, suburban voter base and growing minority population – than keeping Georgia, which he won in 2020 with a narrow majority, this year.
Now, Georgia again is seen as within the party’s grasp – with a senior Democratic strategist describing Harris’s candidacy as a “defibrillator,” jolting voters back into awareness. For young people and voters of color, the strategist said, that jolt was more noticeable, and producing an expectation that Harris could engender more support among the African Americans who comprise roughly a third of Georgia’s population.
But the opportunity in the state, whose former Republican lieutenant governor says is “absolutely” back in play, could extend well beyond those coalitions.
“Any electoral advantage Donald Trump had has been erased,” Geoff Duncan told CNN. “The suburbs of Atlanta are back up for grabs.”
In a new campaign memo shared with CNN Monday evening, Harris’ Georgia state director Porsha White outlined what the campaign hopes is a winning strategy in the state.
“We turned Georgia blue for the first time in three decades in 2020, and we’re feeling the energy we need to win the state again in 2024,” White wrote. “Tomorrow, Vice President Harris’ visit will highlight her brighter vision for the future, where our freedoms are protected and every American has a fair shot. And we’re going to make the choice clear to every voter across our state.”
Per the campaign, more than 7,500 volunteers have signed up in the week since Harris moved to the top of the ticket, with more than 1,000 signed up on the day after Biden announced his decision to withdraw from the 2024 race. The campaign has 24 coordinated offices and 170 Democratic coordinated campaign staff across the state.
Georgia Rep. Nikema Williams, who is also the chair of the state Democratic Party, told CNN her Georgia Democrats gained 1,000 volunteers and saw a more than 300% uptick in donations in the last week.
“The last eight days have been a whole vibe in battleground Georgia,” Williams, who will appear at the Atlanta rally, told CNN. “We are seeing people energized and volunteering in ways that we have not seen in the past.”
Early polls have shown Harris outperforming Biden against Trump with key groups within the Democratic coalition and erasing much of the popular vote lead Trump held over Biden.
A Siena/New York Times poll released last week found that, in a head-to-head match up against Trump with likely voters, Hispanic voters favored Harris over the former president by a 24-point margin and voters ages 18-29 favored her by a 21-point margin. In an earlier poll released July 2, Biden held only 3- and 1-point leads with those groups, respectively, against Trump, within the margin of error.
During Georgia’s 2020 election, the Biden-Harris ticket won 88% of Black voters, 62% of Latinos, 54% of women and a majority of voters ages 18-49, according to CNN exit polls. To win the state again, Harris will need a broad coalition of support from younger voters, suburban women and people of color. This will require shoring up parts of the coalition that frayed during the president’s time in office, particularly Black men.
In interviews, men who attended Monday night’s gathering of the Black Man Lab – an organization that holds events for Black men to build community – in Atlanta shared mixed views on what they wanted to see from Harris. Some called on the vice president to articulate a message specifically aimed at Black men, while others pointed to the enthusiasm around her run and condemned efforts from Republicans to paint her as a DEI candidate despite her record.
One participant, Mario Reyes, rejected the narrative that Black men wouldn’t vote for Harris in November.
“One thing I’ve noticed for years is that Black women show up for us all the time,” Reyes said. “This is the time in which Black men are going to show up for her in big numbers, in a way that they’ve never seen before in America.”
Henry Caslin, who also attended, was also skeptical of the notion of Black men drifting toward Trump, calling it a “myth.” But he said he wanted to see Harris make a unique pitch to him.
“I want to hear a message for me that’s not talking to me through the language of social justice,” he said. “I would like for her to speak more to Black men.”
For Democratic organizers, winning in Georgia isn’t just about keeping the White House, but maintaining hard won gains in a state that has been promising to tilt blue for years.
Biden’s 2020 win in Georgia, when he beat former Trump by just under 12,000 votes, marked the first time a Democratic presidential candidate won the state in nearly 30 years. Weeks later, voters sent two Democratic senators – Ossoff and Warnock – to Washington.
Jay Williams, a Georgia-based Republican strategist, argued that those races were unique. “At the end of the day, Georgia still is a right-leaning state,” he said. “It’s not wildly right, but it is a right-leaning state.”
Despite the gains in late 2020 and early 2021, Abrams, Democrats’ gubernatorial pick, was unable to win in a 2022 rematch against Republican Gov. Brian Kemp.
Democrats are hoping for a different outcome this November. Hillary Holley, who leads Care in Action, a group that advocates for domestic workers, said she believed the Democratic base was consolidating around Harris.
“Georgia was looking for something refreshing, something new that we could bring to voters and a sense of renewed hope,” she said. “And I think that’s what we are now seeing.”
LaTosha Brown, a co-founder of Black Voters Matter, said Harris has invested a lot of time in the state, which could help her now that she’s the presumptive nominee. But the vice president may also benefit from the work grassroots groups in the state have done to help make the state more competitive, Brown said.
“I think we’re breaking up this red wall that many of us feel has created an agenda and policies that have been hurtful and harmful,” Brown said. “We have been working diligently over the last decade to actually build a real movement infrastructure.”
This story has been updated with additional reporting.
CNN’s Jade Gordon contributed to this story.
