Harris and Walz target battleground Georgia in post-Democratic National Convention swing

By Priscilla Alvarez and Betsy Klein, CNN

(CNN) — Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz will campaign together in Georgia for the first time this week, targeting the southeast portion of the state and providing a window into their strategy in the crucial battleground ahead of November.

Few states will be more closely watched than Georgia for signs of how voters are responding to campaign outreach and the newly minted ticket, making it a fitting kickoff for Harris and Walz on the heels of the Democratic National Convention. Four years ago, President Joe Biden became the first Democrat to carry the state since Bill Clinton in 1992, winning it by fewer than 12,000 votes.

When Harris and Walz launch their bus tour in the Peach State Wednesday, they’ll be making a rare trip through south Georgia, a region that typically leans Republican but where Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock had success in the 2022 Senate runoff.

“It’s a diverse coalition of voters, including rural, suburban and urban Georgians, and there is a large population of African American voters that live there,” Harris deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks told CNN, pointing to the campaign’s infrastructure in the state.

The campaign boasts 24 Georgia field offices, including 7 in the southern part of the state with 50 full-time staffers, according to a memo from Harris campaign Georgia state director Porsha White.

Fulks, who managed Warnock’s campaign, argued that Harris, like Warnock, has an advantage in appealing to broader groups of voters, including those in the rural areas, heading into November, with former President Donald Trump as her opponent and anticipated higher turnout in a presidential election year.

“We also see Donald Trump giving us the ability to do the exact same thing that we did when I was campaigning and managing for Sen. Warnock of peeling off Republican voters,” he added.

Harris campaign officials have repeatedly stressed that the presidential election will be a close race and that holds true in Georgia, where recent polling from The New York Times and Siena College showed Trump leading among registered voters in Georgia, 51% to 44%.

But Democratic strategists in the state similarly see an opening.

“This is hugely significant because rural Georgia is not a place where Democrats have typically played and it’s a place where Democrats have really suffered in the polls,” said Fred Hicks, a Democratic strategist based in Georgia. “In 2022, we saw a new opportunity emerge for Democrats.”

The Biden-turned-Harris campaign has focused some of its organization efforts on curtailing Trump’s advantage in rural areas, battleground states director Dan Kanninen told reporters last week.

“We have to cut margins a little bit in rural America and not assume that we can’t talk to these voters – because that assumption has been a bad one for us in the past, and all of a sudden you lose counties 80-20 instead of 60-40. So we have to show up in those places,” Kanninen said at an event hosted by Bloomberg.

He added, “We’re kind of everywhere with the intention of being able to have a permission structure that cleave votes wherever we can.”

Howard Franklin, another Democratic strategist in the state, echoed that, saying: “A big part of winning in the state is not just exceedingly winning in metro Atlanta but driving down the margins by which Republicans win in the rural counties.” Harris held a rally in Atlanta with thousands of attendees in the first week of her presidential campaign.

White, the Georgia state director, pointed to the “rapidly shifting” outer metro Atlanta-area Forsyth and Fayette counties as places with opportunity for Harris to gain ground, citing recent turnout at a Forsyth County “Weekend of Action” event in the county that Trump won in 2020.

CNN previously reported that the Trump campaign has grown increasingly concerned about the state since Harris took over at the top of the Democratic ticket. Trump recently tried to put to rest a long-running feud with Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, a popular Republican, after publicly bashing him at a rally.

Georgia was also at the center of Trump’s attempt to overturn the election with claims of widespread voter fraud, though none was found.

On Monday, Democrats, with the backing of Harris’ presidential campaign, sued to block controversial new election rules in Georgia that they warned could lead to post-election “chaos” in the presidential battleground state in November.

Harris’ and Walz’s swing through southeast Georgia, which includes a mix of rural and urban stops, is expected to focus on the kitchen-table issues following a spate of economy-related ads this week. The bus tour will conclude with a rally in the Savannah area on Thursday, according to the campaign. Walz will not attend the rally.

“On the bus tour, the Vice President and Governor Walz will meet directly with voters in their communities, much like their western Pennsylvania bus tour which included stops at a local campaign field office and a high school football practice,” the campaign said in a release, describing campaigning in Georgia as “critical” in their effort to reach a diverse coalition of voters.

Harris and Walz will also participate in a highly anticipated exclusive joint interview with CNN’s Dana Bash while in Georgia Thursday, marking Harris’ first in-depth, on-the-record conversation with a journalist since ascending to the top of the Democratic ticket.

The bus tour also offers an opportunity to introduce Walz, according to Democratic strategists who cited his upbringing in rural America, military background and his days as a football coach as especially relatable in south Georgia.

“If it moves the meter, you have a new play for Georgia,” Hicks said.

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