President Biden was struggling in Georgia even before the disastrous debate performance last month that ultimately led him to end his re-election bid. Four years ago, he was the first Democrat to win the state in nearly three decades — a narrow but momentous victory fueled by a diverse coalition of voters. This time around, though, support had dissipated, as had hopes of a repeat.
But when Vice President Kamala Harris campaigns in Atlanta on Tuesday for the first time as the party’s likely nominee, she will be greeted by a Democratic engine roaring back to life.
Organizers and allies say that crucial parts of her party’s base that had been growing disengaged, especially Black voters and young people, are invigorated again. Concerns about a blowout Republican win in Georgia have been replaced by newfound optimism about Ms. Harris’s chances, even as former President Donald J. Trump enjoys a solid lead in the polls.
“We have a lot more enthusiasm. I’ll be frank about it,” said State Senator Nabilah Islam, a Democrat whose district sits in Gwinnett County, Georgia’s most diverse and fastest-growing region. “People have been reaching out to me to see how they can help me and the vice president win this November. Those conversations weren’t happening before and now they are.”
Ms. Harris’s supporters in Georgia point to small signs as evidence of what they believe is an already changing race: the record number of new volunteers signing up with her campaign, and the half-dozen virtual meetings of Black pastors, organizers and alumni of historically Black colleges and universities that drew thousands of attendees eager to be involved. Ms. Harris could further galvanize Black voters, a loyal Democratic bloc that makes up roughly one-third of Georgia’s electorate.
And then there is crowd size. Thousands of people have signed up to attend Ms. Harris’s evening rally, according to her campaign, a marked contrast to President Biden’s smaller events, and a number that would put her on a level with Mr. Trump. The former president frequently draws thousands to his rallies at arenas, including recently in Charlotte, N.C., Grand Rapids, Mich., and St. Cloud, Minn.
Appearing with Ms. Harris on Tuesday night will be the hip-hop star Megan Thee Stallion, who is expected to perform — an indication that the vice president is tapping into a cultural currency that had eluded Mr. Biden.
But the little polling that has been conducted since Ms. Harris’s elevation has yet to capture a significant shift in Georgia. Nationally, Mr. Trump maintains a slight lead despite the shift atop the Democratic ticket. In Georgia, he had a six-point lead over Mr. Biden before he dropped out, according to a New York Times polling average. Ms. Harris’s rally on Tuesday is expected to be one of the largest and highest-profile Democratic gatherings in more than two years, but the challenge for her campaign will be translating that energy into votes in just under 100 days.
Joshua McKoon, the chair of the Georgia Republican Party, argued that Ms. Harris’s ascent had not fundamentally changed the dynamics of the race. Conservatives plan to tie Ms. Harris to Mr. Biden’s economic and immigration policies, which they say are unpopular with Georgia voters, and to revisit her record as California’s attorney general. On Saturday, Mr. Trump will hold a rally in Atlanta at the same venue where Ms. Harris’s rally is taking place.
“Perhaps we would be talking about a different dynamic in a campaign if you had a Democrat who was entirely divorced from the administration, who could try to claim some separation,” Mr. McKoon said. “But Vice President Harris obviously owns the last three and a half years, and I don’t really see any evidence — certainly not from the polling and surveying that’s been done — that she moves the needle here in Georgia.”
Nevertheless, many Democrats say they see something happening in their immediate communities. Several organizing groups — including Black women, alumni of Howard University and Morehouse College and members of Black Greek-letter organizations — have announced raising millions for her campaign in its earliest days. And the Georgia Democratic Party said its fund-raising increased by more than 300 percent in the hours after Ms. Harris’s launched her presidential campaign.
Just weeks ago, supporters of Mr. Biden in Georgia said they were balancing their loyalty to the president with deep concerns about his age and the party’s seemingly dismal prospects. But interviews suggested that for many the angst had been replaced with relief and even jubilation.
“I don’t think it’s a sugar high,” the Rev. Dr. Gerald Durley, a veteran civil rights and environmental activist in Atlanta, said of the moment for Ms. Harris. “It is a divine order. This is what it was supposed to be.”
Leagues of Georgia organizers helped turn out young, infrequent voters and voters of color en masse in 2020 to elect Mr. Biden, making him the first Democrat to win the state since Bill Clinton in 1992. In a runoff months later, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, both Democrats, ousted the state’s two incumbent Republican senators.
This year, however, many organizers had grown concerned over diminished resources and attention as Mr. Biden focused more on the so-called blue wall states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. At the same time, a growing number of young and Black voters expressed waning interest in supporting Democrats this November, exposing serious cracks in that winning coalition. In multiple polls and focus groups, many said they were leaning toward voting for Mr. Trump or staying home altogether.
Even as Georgia seemed to be slipping out of Mr. Biden’s grasp, his team developed a measurable advantage over Mr. Trump’s operation in the nuts and bolts of campaign infrastructure, one now afforded to Ms. Harris. The Harris campaign says it has more than 170 staff members in 24 offices across the state, including in Georgia’s rural areas and the growing Atlanta metro region — double the number Mr. Trump has in the state. It expects to open more offices in August.
Ms. Harris’s candidacy has also seemed to galvanize rank-and-file Democrats in Georgia. The campaign said more than 1,000 people signed up to volunteer the day after Mr. Biden endorsed her.
“We’re signaling, I think clearly, that Georgia is and has been in play, and that the team on the ground is capable of winning a close race,” Dan Kanninen, the Harris campaign’s battleground states director, said in an interview.
The excitement is rooted in part in the history-making firsts that a win for Ms. Harris would represent, particularly in a rapidly diversifying deep Southern state like Georgia. Beyond that, supporters believe she can be a forceful messenger relaying the election’s stakes for the country. Many also highlighted her past as a prosecutor, noting the criminal charges Mr. Trump faces in Atlanta.
“It’s poetic,” said Van R. Johnson, the mayor of Savannah and a delegate to the Democratic National Convention. “I’d almost call it destiny because the contrast between the two candidates is so significant.”
He praised Mr. Biden for his achievements, including the federal pandemic relief and infrastructure funds that have poured into the state. But by stepping aside, Mr. Johnson said, “he’s also given us a fighting chance.”
Still, even as Georgia Democrats have made considerable strides at the federal level in recent years, the Republican Party holds every other statewide elected office and controls the State Legislature. In the state’s deep-red counties outside Atlanta and Savannah, Mr. Trump maintains strong bases of support.
Yet Mr. Trump alienated some high-ranking Republicans by spreading baseless claims of election fraud and trying to subvert the outcome of the election in Georgia four years ago. Since then, he has fixated on the state and on trying to exact revenge against those officials, efforts that largely failed.
To mobilize voters this year, the Trump campaign is relying on a network of volunteers called “Trump Force 47.” A campaign official said it had trained more than 1,200 organizers, or “Trump Force captains,” to spearhead the effort. The state party is also hosting events to engage more voters, and said more than 200 people had attended a poll-watching training in Atlanta on Sunday.
The Harris campaign is working to win over the suburban Republican voters who are disenchanted with the former president and his brand of politics, seeing an opening with the roughly 40 percent of Republicans in metro Atlanta counties who supported Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and ambassador to the United Nations, during the presidential primary earlier this year, despite her having already dropped out of the race.
Geoff Duncan, the former Republican lieutenant governor of Georgia who opposes Mr. Trump, endorsed Ms. Harris last week after previously backing Mr. Biden. In an interview, Mr. Duncan acknowledged that winning Georgia would have been an uphill fight for Mr. Biden after his debate performance but said that he believed the state was now “absolutely back in play.”
“The great reset has happened,” Mr. Duncan said. “Any significant advantage that Donald Trump held going into last weekend disappeared overnight, and now it’s a dead heat.”
But while Democrats and their allies have reveled in their new position in Georgia, they also recognize just how fragile it is.
“It was an uphill battle four years ago,” Mr. Johnson said. “It was an uphill battle when we elected Warnock and Ossoff. No matter who was on the ticket, it was going to be an uphill battle. We were prepared to fight, and now we’re prepared to win.”
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