Harris gives Democrats new hope in the ultracompetitive state of Georgia

Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock, who won Georgia in the 2020 election and again in October, has told Vice President Kamala Harris directly that he is “all in” on helping her defeat Donald Trump in the fall. 
 
However, he cautions that it is going to be challenge. 
 
In Chicago during the Democratic convention last week Warnock said this to a few reporters; ‘We built an architecture to win. ’ “I do believe we can place Georgia in the Harris-Walz column. I can certainly not deny that that will be quite difficult. However, can it be done? I believe it definitely can. ” 
 
Georgia will be at the center of the action this week as the Biden-Harris campaign takes their bus tour with Walz and Harris, starting on Wednesday, through the Savannah region while Harris will speak alone on Thursday. The same day they scheduled a joint TV interview with Harris who has not done any TV interviews since becoming her party’s nominee. 
 
In the 2020 presidential election, Biden was able to defeat Trump in Georgia by less than 14,000 votes making it the first time Democrats have flipped this longtime Republican seat in 29 years. It is now up to Harris to demonstrate whether that was a lucky break or whether Democrats can continue keeping it in the blue column at the uppermost level. 
 
Harris would make for a better demographic match with Georgia than Biden, the state with the highest percentage of Black voters among all the presidential swing states. It is also younger than the electorate of most of the other Presidential swing states, and while Biden was having problems with young voters this cycle, they at least seem to be taking to Harris. There is also a rapidly expanding Asian American voters’ bloc which is overwhelmingly democratic and has indeed tipped the balance for the democrats in some key races. 
 
It also allows Harris to be already fundraising at a much higher clip than Biden, and Atlanta media isn’t nearly as pricey. And if she polling worse than Biden in the nearly all-white world of Scranton-and-Coaldale, Georgia’s 16 electoral votes—which could give Democrats a path to 270 absent either Michigan’s 15 or Wisconsin’s 10—provide an arguably sturdier chariot. 
 
Trump’s team is also focusing on Georgia, which is also included in the plan that can bring him back to the White House. 
 
“If we maintain North Carolina, it is sufficient for Georgia and Pennsylvania,” a senior Trump adviser said this month. 
 
To win Georgia, Harris will need to reproduce the formula that powered Biden and Warnock: increasing the vote share and activating base in overwhelmingly Democratic Atlanta; picking up a lot of points in the densely-populated Atlanta suburbs, which is home to college-educated voters who are averse to Trump; and losing by a smaller margin in the rural areas that make up the majority of the state’s population and are staunch Republican territory, which per the electoral college would mean a win for her with 16 electoral votes. 
 
An official of the Harris campaign said, “Harris campaign has the largest in-state operation of any Democratic presidential campaign cycle ever, including offices in rural counties including Washington and Jenkins counties. ” Harris’ campaign targeted voters in small town and declared that in the Biden-Harris administration, resources would be devoted to improving rural health care and rural internet connection. 
 
The campaign suggested that “after Trump”, the focus would be on the 2024 primary electorate; particularly, the states where Trump lost votes to Haley as this is where the party needs to expand the electorate among the center-right population The Trump campaign also named Mr. Duncan as “credible surrogate”. It intends to focus on internal conflicts in the Republican party such as Trump’s previous aggressive remarks to the GOP Gov. Brian Kemp for the certification of the victory of Biden in the 2020 election. 
 
If Biden had not dropped out the campaign had redirected almost all of its efforts this time to the traditional demography of the party — Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania — because some Democrats began to question whether the party’s victory in Georgia in the last election was an isolated event that could not be repeated, particularly without the presence of Warnock. 
 
Fulks, who served as Warnock’s campaign manager for the 2022 senatorial elections, is the deputy campaign manager for the Harris presidential campaign. 
 
The recent change in fortunes especially in Georgia is evident after Samoa Baker the chairman of the Gwinnett County Republican Party stated that replacing Biden with Harris has boosted Democrats’ standings. 
 
“I was very, very confident that it will be — not necessarily a walk in the park, but a 4- or 5-point victory But now it should be a little closer because I have observed that she has motivated some of the Democrats who were inactive before to get more active,” Baker noted. 
 
He said the thing that brings Trump win is to keep politics out of it, which is advice Trump gets often but does not follow. 
 
“I really think the whole thing comes down to this: Trump remains focused and aggressor, he triumphs,” Just border, the economy, inflation, housing, Baker noted. “If he sticks to those issues I will certainly agree that is a victory They must focus on that. Stay on that. ” 
 
The diverse and populous Gwinnett County, just outside Atlanta, is the embodiment of Georgia’s red-to-blue shift: It opted for Republican candidate Mitt Romney by almost 10 percent in 2012, flipped to Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton with 5 percent margin in 2016 and then gave Biden an impressive lead of 18 percent in 2020. 
 
If Trump were to win Georgia, it would probably be necessary for him and Pence to change some of those voters back, suppress the Democratic vote or locate significantly more new Trump voters to outvote Harris new voters. 

Trump’s team expects to link Harris to Biden administration policies that are unpopular in the state and former Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, who would have been the first Black female governor in the country.

The senior RNCO official stated that, ‘I think Georgia is ready to reject her very far left stances’ and that Harris’ political positions are similar to those of Abrams’. 
 
The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity while sharing tactics, accused Democrats of only recently discovering portions of the state beyond Atlanta and said that while their bus tour might play well, it would not match the effectiveness of GOP efforts to turn out low-propensity voters across Georgia. 
 
“Currently, the Democrats are just too busy with their travelling circus in their bus tour, while GOP is keen on the Georgia vote and we know that voters on the ground are more responsive and energetic across the length and breadth of Georgia,” the official avowed. 
 
Keisha Lance Bottoms, the former Atlanta mayor whom Harris traveled to 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. 
 
However, during the time of campaigning for Bottoms, Harris said that coming to Atlanta is like coming home which allowed her to travel all the way from California to support a mayoral candidate. She also said how often she had been to the city, which she stated is the hub of black history, culture and commerce. 
 
“Atlanta, it’s has so much Created, based and fought for in this country,” said Dr.