Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock, who won Georgia in 2020 and again in 2022, directly told Harris that he was “very willing” to help her defeat Donald Trump this fall.
But he warns that it will be difficult.
“We’ve built an architecture to win,” Warnock told a small group of reporters in Chicago at the Democratic convention last week. “I think we can put Georgia in the Harris-Walz column. I’m not going to pretend that’s an easy thing to do. But can we do it? I absolutely believe we can.”
Georgia will be in focus this week, as Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, begin a joint bus tour of the state on Wednesday, which is expected to end in the Savannah area with a solo rally by Harris on Thursday. That same day, Harris and Walz are scheduled to give a joint television interview, Harris’ first since becoming her party’s nominee.
Joe Biden won Georgia by less than 12,000 votes over Trump in 2020, becoming the first Democrat to win the longtime Republican stronghold in nearly three decades. Now it’s up to Harris to prove whether that was just a fluke or whether Democrats can hold onto their seats in the blue column at the top.
Harris is a better demographic fit than Biden for Georgia, which has the highest proportion of black voters of any presidential candidate. Its electorate is also younger than that of most other presidential candidates, and while Biden has struggled to attract younger voters this cycle, they appear more receptive to Harris so far. The state also has a growing Asian-American population, which leans Democratic and has helped the party in close races.
Harris already has a much larger fundraising haul than Biden, making the expensive Atlanta media market less daunting. And if she faces more difficulty than Biden in the white-majority Rust Belt, Georgia’s 16 electoral votes — compared to Michigan’s 15 and Wisconsin’s 10 — offer a potential alternative path to 270.
Trump’s team also places great importance on Georgia, seeing it as a key part of his return to the White House.
“As long as we hold North Carolina, we just need to win Georgia and Pennsylvania. That’s all we need to win,” a Trump adviser said this month.
To win Georgia, Harris will have to replicate the formula that made Biden and Warnock strong: boost turnout and mobilize Democrats in deeply blue Atlanta; score big in the city’s affluent suburbs, which are full of well-educated but Trump-skeptical voters; and limit her margin of defeat in the vast, solidly red rural areas, where one less loss could net her the state’s 16 electoral votes.
A Harris campaign official boasted that she has “the largest statewide operation of any Democratic presidential campaign cycle,” including offices in “rural counties like Washington and Jenkins counties.” As part of Harris’ appeal to small-town voters, her campaign touted the Biden-Harris administration’s investments to boost rural health care and internet access.
The campaign, which has relied on former Republican Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, has also indicated that it is looking to the 2024 primary results as a benchmark for determining where Trump lost significant votes to Nikki Haley and where he could increase his support among center-right voters. It plans to highlight Republican infighting, including Trump’s history of attacking Republican Gov. Brian Kemp for certifying Biden’s 2020 victory in the state.
Before Biden stepped aside, his team had all but abandoned Georgia this cycle, opting for a more cautious strategy focused on the so-called Blue Wall states — Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania — as some Democrats wondered whether their 2020 success in Georgia was a fluke that couldn’t be easily replicated, especially without Warnock on the ballot.
Warnock’s 2022 campaign manager, Quentin Fulks, is serving as deputy campaign manager for Harris’ presidential campaign.
Sammy Baker, the chairman of the Gwinnett County Republican Party, said Harris replacing Biden improved the Democrats’ standing in Georgia.
“I was very, very confident that it wouldn’t be an easy win, but it would be a 4- or 5-point win. I think it’s going to be a little bit closer now, because I think she’s energized some Democrats who weren’t energized before, and they seem to be a little bit more active,” Baker said.
He said the key to a Trump victory is to stay focused on policy, advice Trump frequently receives and rarely follows.
“I really think it comes down to this: Trump stays on message and he wins. It’s just the border, it’s just the economy, it’s just inflation, it’s just real estate,” Baker said. “If he stays on those issues, I think it’s a win. And that’s what they need to focus on. Stay on that.”
Diverse and populous Gwinnett County, just outside Atlanta, epitomizes Georgia’s red-to-blue shift: It voted for Republican Mitt Romney by nearly 10 points in 2012, then swung to Democrat Hillary Clinton by 5 points in 2016 and voted for Biden by 18 points in 2020.
A Trump victory in Georgia would most likely require turning out some of those voters, reducing Democratic turnout, or finding more new Trump voters to defeat new Harris voters.
Trump’s team is hoping to tie Harris to Biden administration policies that are unpopular in the state and to former Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, who would have been the nation’s first Black woman to serve as chief executive.
“I think Georgia is ready to reject her very left-wing positions,” said a senior Republican National Committee official who compared Harris’ political views to those of Abrams.
The official, discussing strategy on condition of anonymity, accused Democrats of only just discovering parts of the state outside of vote-rich Atlanta and predicted that their bus tour would not be as effective as the GOP’s efforts to target and mobilize low-propensity voters across Georgia.
“The Democrats are doing their circus act right now with their bus tour, but we are focused on mobilizing voters in Georgia, and we think voters on the ground have been very engaged and are energized across the state,” the official said.
Keisha Lance Bottoms, the former Atlanta mayor Harris visited the city to campaign for during her successful 2017 bid, is now a senior adviser to her campaign — and she got a front-row seat at last week’s convention in Chicago.
At the time, while campaigning for Bottoms, Harris said that “coming to Atlanta always feels like coming home” to explain why she flew from California to support a mayoral candidate. She also noted the number of times she had visited the city, which she said is central to Black history, culture and business.
“There are so many things that define us as a country that were created, that were founded, that were won here in Atlanta,” she said.
