Harris campaign seizes on suburban women as a key part of its North Carolina strategy

For some reason, when Kamala Harris took over as the leader of the Democratic nomination in late July something happened in North Carolina.

They received a record number of volunteers in thousands. Of the 23,600+ people who came forward, 94% of them were first time voters with the information coming from the campaign. There were more registrants among women in the week following Biden’s stepping down, with even a sharper rise among women of colour, a tracking firm reports.

And all of it happened before the worse than worse calamity that befell GOP gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson, who declared himself, as per CNN, a Black Nazi.

Robinson has been appearing in North Carolina ads targeting women with him speaking for a complete ban on abortion, and it’s not about the life of the mother.

“This is about killing a child because you were not intelligent enough not to spread your legs for everyone to see,” Robinson says in one of the videos.

Robinson’s culture wars, the tentative signs of an uptick in enthusiasm around Harris, is buoying Democrats’ hopes in the Tarheel State, especially among female voters despite the state has not flipped for the Democratic candidate since Obama’s in 2008.

As part of the Harris campaign strategy in North Carolina, noted a campaign official, the idea further is to seek to pad turnout of not only the black vote but also of the female vote, especially in and around suburban areas. That is on top of their efforts to gain a footing in rural areas of the state. They also are going after Republicans they perceive as having been turned off by Trump — or Robinson. That includes in counties where the former governor of neighboring South Carolina, Nikki Haley, outperformed in the Republican primary.

Harris’ most vocal applause moments were at a Sept. 12 rally in Greensboro, and with one of the key topics motivating female voters across the country being a woman’s right to reproductive freedom.

“Think about it: A woman might miscarry and because of Trump’s abortion bans, there are many women who are denied care, Harris said. Then she was quick to remind everyone of her encounter with Trump. “And when he was asked on Tuesday night, Donald Trump evaded the question whether he would veto a national abortion ban. You recall that he declined to respond to that question?”

Tom Bonier, whose firm TargetSmart compiles data on voter registration, said that the number of women registering to vote in North Carolina jumped in the week that began July 21, a week after Biden endorsed Harris. Three weeks after Harris became the presumptive nominee, the voter registration rate among North Carolina women rose by 61.5%. During that week, there was a 145% increase over 2022 and a 557% increase of voter registration of Black women under the age of 30.

To prove it right, Bonier breaks down all of this as evidence to suggest a higher turnout of Democratic voters in North Carolina.

“It’s massive. It’s not simply a matter of having a whole bunch of new registrants and voters who are quite likely to participate in the elections very high, but it tends to be borne out by looking at higher enthusiasm among that group in general,” he said. “This means women in general, especially younger women, including women of color, are likely to turn out at a much higher rate than they otherwise would have. Surely that’s all we need to make North Carolina competitive.”

Hence, the electoral college has been such that in the 2020 election, the incumbent, Donald Trump, only got a win by a margin of 1.3%. Since then the Supreme Court has overruled the Roe v. Wade, and the state has seen an increase in population around its metropolitan giants of Raleigh and Charlotte also.

“People all across North Carolina — in the suburbs, cities, and in rural areas — are saying ‘No thank you’ to Donald Trump and Mark Robinson’s Project 2025 goal to end abortion rights and raise costs on families,” MacMillan added. “While they’re regressing our campaign is gaining steam and we’re showing up in various communities across the state to bring awareness to Vice President Harris’ New Way Forward where our rights are respected and everyone in North Carolina can not only survive but thrive.”

The republicans are not so sure. Especially because rural North Carolina is the epitome of Trump’s America in its purest form. Trump’s campaign has repeatedly claimed its confidence in the state. Nonetheless, it continues to spend on ads there as a signal that it understands a threat does exist. On Saturday, Trump is to hold a rally in Wilmington. Robinson will not be attending the event.

When it comes to Democrats improving their standing with suburban women, one Trump supporter told the magazine, “Good luck with that.”

And a former North Carolina Republican Party official questioned whether Robinson’s problems would either save or destroy the state for the GOP. They had a chance regardless of this, a former official says, due to the demography and in particular North Carolina’s rapid population growth in urban areas where Democrats were competitive or slightly ahead in the major suburban counties.

“Now they have a political intervening event,” they said more. “This is going to determine whether down-ballot erodes up.”

Dallas Woodhouse the North Carolina exective director of American Majority a conservative activist and voter mobilization organization said he finds the information on Robinson worrying and disappointing.

“Nobody wants to see this kind of thing about their political party five or six weeks before Election Day,” Woodhouse said. “A little bit sober reflection this morning I think showed you that by the fundamentals of North Carolina, not by a lot but by a little bit, durably exercising their preferences they still keep on favoring Trump.”

But, Thomas Mills, longtime state consultant and editor-publisher of PoliticsNC dot com, said Robinson’s issues may cause a drain on Republican votes in total because registered Democrats have Trump on video over and over again attesting to Robinson’s character. The following day after the CNN release the print Harris had already aired a TV commercial where he was depicted alongside the young lady. Trump has referred to Robinson as Martin Luther King on steroids.

“It gets to judgment, and it just demoralizes Republicans,” said Mills. He said there is a faction of the Republican electorate that is unhappy with Trump that would be further alienated by the claims against Robinson. “If those people decide they’re not going to vote, or they’re going to actually vote for the Democrat, in a state like North Carolina, where 75,000 votes out of 5.5 million make the difference, that goes a long way.”

Another Democratic consultant, Morgan Jackson who has been working for the gubernatorial candidate Josh Stein, the current attorney general reiterated how this state is divided almost down the middle between the rural and more urban/metropolitan folks. 

“It’s a 50-50 state. This race is one that we have been sampling extensively. As far as a presidential race, you couldn’t possibly make it any tighter, Jackson pointed out. Frankly, there are no much … purple counties in North Carolina. 93% of them are deep blue and getting bluer or deep red and getting redder.

“The way you win statewide in North Carolina,” he said, “is you win on the margins.”