I can see why many people might not consider late August the best time to head to the Deep South. So hot. So sticky. But this week strikes me as the perfect moment for the Democratic presidential ticket to take a quick bus tour around southern Georgia.
Hot off their multiday love fest in Chicago, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are making clear they intend to play hard for Georgia, a battleground state, and not just in the politically blue, population-rich metro area of Atlanta. With the presidential race promising to be tight and ugly, they are wisely venturing outside the party’s usual comfort zones and are sending a message similar to the one from their preconvention road trip around Pennsylvania: We will show up in every part of the state and fight for every vote.
It seems worth noting that southern Georgia has an abundance of Black voters, a demographic the Democratic Party was feeling very shaky about when President Biden was looking like the nominee — and is hoping to re-energize now that Harris is at the top of the ticket. But even before Biden stepped aside, the party was investing in the area. “The South Georgia region is a priority for the campaign,” a representative for the Harris team told NBC. “We have nearly 50 full-time staff across seven offices in the area, including Valdosta. We have hosted more than 500 events in the region since May 31.”
Team Trump is not conceding any ground. Last week Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, headlined an event in Valdosta, a majority-Black city not too far from the Florida state line. (Although it was Vance’s cringey stop at an area doughnut shop that wound up being widely shared on social media.)
So far, Trump has a polling edge in the state. But his troubled history with Georgia, where he is widely believed to have cost Republicans a Senate seat or two in recent years, makes it tricky terrain. Also, he has struggled to let go of his feud with the state’s popular governor, Brian Kemp. Just a few weeks ago, Trump trashed Kemp at a rally in Atlanta. This freaked out more than a few Republicans, and some kind of truce was brokered. Last week, Kemp endorsed Trump on Fox News.
Still, there is a whole lot of bad blood swirling around the state, and the entire situation feels unsettled — and potentially exploitable by the Democrats.
A postconvention bus tour feels like a good place to start.
The post Kamala Harris and Tim Walz Are Road-Tripping Through Georgia. Could They Actually Win There? appeared first on New York Times.
