WASHINGTON — Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, kick off a two-day bus tour of Georgia on Wednesday that will wind through rural areas in the southern part of the state before ending with a large rally in the coastal city of Savannah.
The Democratic ticket will meet with supporters, campaign workers, small business owners and voters. The party believes that to win the crucial battleground state from Republican Donald Trump in November, it will need more than the Atlanta and suburbs that delivered Joe Biden in 2020 and also make gains, however small, in GOP strongholds.
The Georgia trip is a catch-up visit from earlier this month, when the duo had planned a seven-state swing tour to introduce the new Democratic ticket. The North Carolina and Georgia legs of the trip were scrapped when Tropical Storm Debby battered the region.
In addition to the bus tour and Thursday’s meeting, Harris and Walz will sit down with CNN anchor Dana Bash for their first joint interview, which will air Thursday night.
The Democratic strategy of winning votes in Republican parts of the state has had some success before. Raphael Warnock, Georgia’s first black senator, won re-election in 2022 by almost 3 percentage points — while Joe Biden wore Georgia had increased by just a quarter of a percentage point about two years earlier — partly by venturing into the deepest red areas, partly driven by operatives who are now part of Harris’ campaign team.
Harris has another Labor Day campaign blitz with President Biden in Detroit and Pittsburgh, with the election just 70 days away. The first mail ballots will be sent to voters in just two weeks.
In Georgia, Republican Gov. Brian Kemp appears to have moved past Trump’s scathing attacks on him at a rally in the state a few weeks ago, saying it was a “minor distraction that belongs in the past.”
On the eve of Harris’ visit, Kemp told Fox News, “I don’t know exactly what happened leading up to the rally. I’ve seen a lot of different stories and people’s accounts of what happened.”
At the meeting, Trump attacked the governor, blaming him for his narrow loss in the state in 2020. In a roughly 10-minute tirade, Trump slammed Kemp for not pandering to his false theories about election fraud. He also blamed the governor for not stopping a local district attorney prosecute him and others for their efforts to overturn the results in the state.
Trump changed his tone last week, thanking the governor in a social media post for all his “help and support in Georgia, where a victory is so important to the success of our party and, more importantly, our country.”
Kemp said on Fox that Republicans “need to tell people why they should vote for us, what we’re going to do to make things better than they are today. And there are a lot of issues that I think you can compare to Kamala Harris and her record.”
“I think that’s what we need to focus on, not on the riot two or three weeks ago.”
Meanwhile, Harris’ campaign launched a new ad in states where the election remains uncertain, seeking to tie Trump to the conservative “Project 2025.”
The first advertisement claims Trump is “out to control” voters, and posts Trump quotes alongside ominous screenshots of the plan. It’s part of Harris’ $370 million in digital and television advertising reservations between Labor Day and Election Day.
Project 2025, led by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, is a detailed 920-page manual for governing under the next Republican administration, including ousting thousands of civil servants and replaced by Trump loyalists and reversing Food and Drug Administration approval of drugs used in abortions.
Trump has tried to distance himself from Project 2025, even though it was drafted by longtime allies and former Trump administration officials. Last month, he posted on social media that he had not seen the plan, had “no idea who was responsible for it, and, contrary to our very well-received Republican Platform, had nothing to do with it.”