Harris sets sights on Georgia after DNC in latest swing state push
Trump aims for truce with Kemp as polls tighten
The newly crowned Democratic ticket is now setting its sights on the Peach State as it hopes to build on the momentum and unity coming out of last week’s convention.
Vice President Kamala Harris and running mate Tim Walz will kick off a bus tour across south Georgia this week. The campaign has yet to confirm the itinerary, but it is likely to resemble their recent bus tour of western Pennsylvania. Harris will wrap up the tour with a solo rally in Savannah on Thursday.
Harris had initially planned to rally with her new running mate in the Hostess City earlier this month, but the event was postponed after Hurricane Debby ravaged the region.
The south Georgia barnstorm is set to be the new ticket’s first big swing state tour coming out of last week’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago, where special guest speakers and celebrity performers fired up thousands of delegates and supporters in the lead-up to the Vice President Harris’s becoming the first woman of color to grace a major party’s convention stage as a presidential nominee.
It all comes as polls show a tightening race between Harris and former President Donald Trump: an average of recent statewide surveys finds the two statistically tied in the battle for Georgia’s 16 electoral votes. Democrats hope that growing enthusiasm for the Harris/Walz ticket will be enough to hold onto a state they captured by fewer than 12,000 votes four years ago.
The Trump campaign is ramping up its efforts to define Harris on the airwaves, while the former president himself appears to be ready for a truce in his longstanding feud with Gov. Brian Kemp. But it remains to be seen if we will ever see the two share a stage on the campaign trail over the next two months — or if it will be enough to heal the deepened divides among Republicans in one of the most important swing states.
EDIT: Harris is the first woman of color to be nominated by a major party, not the first woman.