ATLANTA — Georgia Democrats are operating with renewed intensity ahead of Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign rally in Georgia on Tuesday, the party now galvanized by a candidate who legislators, organizers and voters alike say has boosted their chances of keeping once ruby-red Georgia in Democratic hands in November.
The event will be Harris’ second rally since she launched her own presidential campaign after President Joe Biden decided to drop out on July 21.
“There’s an incredible amount of enthusiasm for Kamala Harris. I haven’t seen anything like this in my many years in Georgia politics,” state Rep. Sam Park said.
Park’s district is in Gwinnett County, one of the state’s largest jurisdictions. It was once a conservative stronghold but now goes to Democrats by double digits thanks to demographic shifts and a diverse base of Black, Latino and Asian voters.
Harris’ strength comes in part from the belief that she can better engage those voters, a belief already buoyed by polling that has signaled early strength from Harris among voters of color and Gen Z voters in particular.
The question, in a state that Democrats have carried several times in recent years but only by the thinnest of margins, is whether Harris can use those strengths while also holding on to wavering Republicans and independents who abandoned former President Donald Trump and Trump-like candidates in 2020 and 2022.
Republican leaders in the state maintain winning Georgia again will be too tall a task for Harris, particularly as, they say, their plans to target Democrats over immigration and the economy remain unchanged.
“It’s essentially a swap of Democratic candidates because Joe Biden could not win. The failed policies remain the same, prioritizing agendas that seem to put Americans last,” DeKalb County Republican Party chair Marci McCarthy said, describing Harris’ burst of popularity in the state as a “sugar high.”
Still, the Harris campaign identified Georgia, alongside other Sun Belt states, as top targets in a recent memo outlining its path to victory.
“The Vice President’s advantages with young voters, Black voters, and Latino voters will be important to our multiple pathways to 270 electoral votes,” Harris for President campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon wrote.
Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., a longtime ally of Biden’s, said: “Kamala Harris is attractive to a new generation. She excites those who are coming into the party for the first time. She knows how to use social media technology. She’s communicating with people on their level, and people like what they hear.”
Harris’ sudden ascension to the top of the Democratic ticket is also energizing voters eager to elect the first woman of color as president.
“I feel like it’s history for us,” said Tracy Starks, 56, a voter from Lithonia. “It’s great for the women. It’s great for the Black community. It’s just great. And I think she is going to give Trump what he needs. He ain’t ready for this one.”
Since Harris took over, Democrats have opened four new field offices in the state, including one in Gwinnett County, recruited 7,500 new volunteers and hosted nearly 200 events.
In total, it says, the Harris campaign has 170 staff members working across 24 campaign offices in the state.
The new field offices aren’t just in Democratic strongholds, where Harris will need to maximize turnout; they are also in counties largely considered safely Republican.
“In Georgia, we’re running the largest in-state operation of any Democratic presidential campaign cycle ever,” Tyler said, noting offices “strategically located in all corners of the state.”
On Sunday, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, one of several Democratic governors vying to be Harris’ running mate, headlined the campaign office opening in Forsyth County, where Trump picked up 66% of the vote in 2020. Trump won with similar percentages in other counties the campaign is targeting, including Butts and Lowndes.
“In Georgia and across America, every single vote counts. There aren’t red counties and blue counties. There’re just counties with American families that want a better life, and Vice President Harris is going to be talking about just that,” Beshear told reporters after he spoke in Forsyth.
“That is how you win votes in counties like this, by not trying to move something to the right or the left, but with the vice president moving all of us forward,” he said.
That’s in line with the advice former Lt. Gov Geoff Duncan, a lifelong Republican and avowed Trump critic, offered in an op-ed in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution endorsing Harris, calling her “the best vehicle toward preventing another stained Trump presidency.”
“There are still pockets of undecided voters that total in the millions, including the roughly one in five GOP voters who were casting protest votes for former South Carolina Governor and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley in Republican primaries months after she dropped out,” Duncan wrote. “Harris must break from electoral tradition and speak to those voters, resisting the urge to cater to her base.”
Duncan is among a group of Georgia Republicans who have repudiated Trump for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election in the state, an act that resulted in an indictment in Fulton County and that the Harris campaign has suggested left a sour taste in the mouths of Georgia Republicans who may have grown tired of Trump’s antics.
“Donald Trump and the ticket have problems with Republicans in Georgia — look at Geoff Duncan,” Harris campaign battleground state director Dan Kanninen said. “I think the combination of those two things, having a candidate who can mobilize our key coalition … and the problems they have with Republicans, make that state in play.”
Harris’ rally in Atlanta will mark her sixth visit this year to Georgia, where campaign officials say she’s expected to “lay out her vision for an America where we move forward, not backwards,” and “prosecute the case against Trump and his Project 2025, agenda.”
But beyond her remarks, her presence is giving Democrats new optimism ahead of a difficult presidential campaign.
“The sun is out shining brightly; the sky is blue and clear,” Johnson said. “The way forward is clarified, and people feel good about the direction that we’re headed in. They feel great about having someone at the head of our ticket that we can all get behind, and that is Kamala Harris.”
