Harris swoops into Atlanta with Democrats saying she has put Georgia ‘in play’

As Vice President Kamala Harris embarks on her second week on the campaign trail, she is set to visit a battleground state President Joe Biden may have lost in his campaign: Georgia.

According to a Hill/Emerson College poll, Harris is polling just 2 points below former President Donald Trump, with Harris gaining 46% to Trump’s 48%. In 2020, Biden narrowly flipped the state blue by a little more than 11,000 votes and marked the first time Georgia voted for a Democrat for president since 1992.

“I have not seen this much excitement amongst the Democratic base and Democratic coalition since Barack Obama,” Tharon Johnson, an Atlanta-based political strategist who has worked for Democratic candidates in the state, told the Wall Street Journal. “This is the most excitement we’ve felt in Georgia over the last decade.” 

Harris is set to campaign in Atlanta on Tuesday, where she will be accompanied by Sens. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) and Jon Ossoff (D-GA) and two-time Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams. There will also be a performance from rapper Megan Thee Stallion.

The news comes as the Harris campaign announced it broke records and raised more than $200 million in the first week of the campaign. 

A “Win with Black Women” call reached capacity on Zoom, with more than 50,000 listening in. Black women are a key coalition of the Democratic Party, with 90% of the base voting for Biden in 2020. According to data from the U.S. census, more than 33% of Georgia’s population is black, which is the highest percentage among this year’s battleground states.

The Harris campaign is counting on that renewed enthusiasm in the base to turn out on Election Day.

“The groundswell of support around the vice president is real, and it is meaningful. Our task now is to translate that enthusiasm into action,” Dan Kanninen, Harris’s battleground state director, told reporters on Monday. 

While Harris has been vice president, she has regularly visited the state, announcing investments and visiting historically black colleges and universities. Her campaign has 24 offices and 170 staffers in the state.

“She’s rapidly united the Democratic Party behind her candidacy, sees the momentum in this head-to-head race against former President Trump, and she’s electrifying volunteers and grassroots Democrats across the country,” Ossoff said on MSNBC. “She’s put Georgia in play.”

On the other hand, Trump’s relationship with some Republicans in the state, such as Gov. Brian Kemp (R-GA), has soured after he continuously claimed the 2020 election was stolen, without evidence, and demanded Republican state officials, including Kemp, overturn the election results in his favor.