Harris tries to put Trump on his heels in swing state North Carolina

Vice President Kamala Harris is giving Democrats hope they can pull off an upset in North Carolina, a state that seemed out of reach just weeks ago with President Joe Biden leading the ticket.

Democrats have not won North Carolina since former President Barack Obama took it by less than a percentage point, or 14,000 votes, in 2008. But polling shows Harris could be breaking through in the Tar Heel State.

Trump maintains a 2 percentage-point lead over Harris, according to the RealClearPolitics average, but the race is at present a toss-up. A Cook Political Report poll published on Wednesday, for instance, found Harris ahead by the same margin, 46% to 44%.

A source close to the Harris campaign said the team has been investing in North Carolina for a year, with almost 30 offices expected to be opened by the end of the week. Meanwhile, Harris herself will be making a trip to North Carolina on Friday, her eighth of the year, to deliver a policy-focused address on the economy.

But Republicans say that Democrats are wasting their time in the state.

“In 2016 and 2020, Democrats lit money on fire in North Carolina only to lose to President Trump,” Republican National Committee spokeswoman Anna Kelly said in a statement. “With President Trump’s record of success in the state and two North Carolinians at the helm of the RNC, 2024 will be no different — Tar Heel State families have felt the strain of Kamala’s failures and are ready to deliver for President Trump yet again.”

A second RNC operative told the Washington Examiner that Republicans have expanded on their prior organizing efforts and suggested they will pursue a strategy in which they engage voters across the entire state, as opposed to Democrats who are “afraid to even step foot outside of cities like Raleigh and Charlotte.”

North Carolina is not one of the must-win states for Harris. Her campaign is expected to invest more resources in battlegrounds including Pennsylvania and Michigan. But the focus reflects the ways in which the electoral map has expanded since Biden bowed out of the presidential race.

The president kept former President Donald Trump to his smallest margin of victory in 2020 but was trailing him by around 5 points when he endorsed Harris to replace him.

A closer race between Harris and Trump in North Carolina could put pressure on the former president to spend more time and money there than he would have with Biden. On Wednesday, Trump made his fourth trip to North Carolina to prebut Harris’s economic policy address.

“While [Trump] has barely any organization and shares a ballot with MAGA extremists like Mark Robinson, we have built a campaign to win close races,” Dory MacMillan, a state spokeswoman for Harris, told the Washington Examiner, referring to the Republican nominee for governor.

She accused Trump of “scrambling” in North Carolina because his “toxic” agenda to “restrict our freedoms, kill our jobs, and raise costs on our families doesn’t play well here.”

Harris’s easiest path to 270 electoral votes is through Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. But Daron Shaw, a professor of government at the University of Texas, Austin, judged that her electoral map could depend on either performing well in the blue wall states, the Atlantic South, or the Mountain West.

“The blue wall strategy requires Harris to run up the numbers in the main cities, Philly, Detroit, Milwaukee, to hold some union members–working class whites, and to recover support among blacks,” Shaw told the Washington Examiner. “The Atlantic South path requires a single win in the blue wall states, Pennsylvania, and then registering and dominating among black voters, as well as suburban women in Atlanta, Charlotte, etc. The Mountain West strategy requires her to win two of three in the blue wall states, and then to recover lost ground with Latinos and younger and educated voters in Arizona and Nevada.”

To that end, Charles Bierbauer, dean emeritus of the University of South Carolina College of Mass Communications and Information Studies, said Harris’s choice of Raleigh for her Friday speech was strategic.

“The Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill triangle trends blue,” Bierbauer, who now lives in North Carolina, told the Washington Examiner. “It makes some sense for her to go there. To win North Carolina, she needs to rally the traditional Democratic vote, ensure she gets as much of the black vote as possible, and persuade the independents and never-Trumper Republicans that she is their best answer.”

Democrats are hoping North Carolina’s gubernatorial race to replace term-limited Gov. Roy Cooper (D-NC) will help Harris with that last part as the party tries to portray Robinson as Trump-esque. Robinson vehemently denies claims he is “extreme” as Democrats emphasize controversial statements he has made in the past.

Pope “Mac” McCorkle, a former Democratic consultant and Duke University public policy practice professor, described Robinson’s campaign as being “in deep, deep trouble” but he said the political repercussions for Harris and Trump are unknown since anti-Trump Republicans could vote for third-party candidates.

“My gut is, yes, [North Carolina is] in reach, but probably something else has to happen, like Harris beating Trump clearly in the debate,” McCorkle told the Washington Examiner. “Harris has recovered the loss that Biden suffered from the age issue basically. Now, can she turn this into kind of an Obama-like coalition with really big turnout from young people and women and African Americans and minorities? Maybe. But we’re yet to see the Obama coalition. … Democrats in this race against Trump are underdogs.”