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SAVANNAH, Ga. — Vice President Kamala Harris appears to be making a statement by choosing Georgia for her first campaign trail swing following last week's Democratic National Convention.
Harris on Wednesday kicked off a two-day bus swing through the southeastern part of the key battleground state accompanied by her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.
Walz will head off to North Carolina for a Thursday evening fundraiser while Harris plans on "energizing thousands of Georgians at a rally in Savannah," according to her campaign.
The vice president's message is that Georgia is once again in play in November's election.
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Vice President Kamala Harris greets the crowd during her presidential campaign rally in Atlanta July 30, 2024. (Kyle Mazza/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Georgia has long been a reliably red state in White House elections, and Joe Biden narrowly edged then-President Trump in 2020 to become the first Democrat in nearly three decades to capture Georgia.
Fast-forward to this year's election, and Trump saw his slight edge in the polls in Georgia over Biden grow to a solid single-digit lead after the president's disastrous performance in their one debate, a late June showdown in Atlanta.
But in the 5½ weeks since the vice president replaced her boss atop the Democrats' 2024 ticket, polls indicate that it's once again a margin-of-error race in the Peach State.
A Fox News poll conducted August 23-26 in Georgia indicates Harris with a razor-thin 50%-48% edge over Trump among registered voters. The most recent Fox News poll in Georgia before Biden dropped out of the race indicated Trump topping the president by six points, 51%-45%.
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Georgia's popular two-term conservative governor agrees that his state's competitive.
"Certainly this is a battleground state," Gov. Brian Kemp emphasized in an exclusive Fox News Digital interview Tuesday.
"I’ve been saying for a long time that the road to the White House is going to run through Georgia. And there’s no path for former President Trump to win, or any Republican … to get to 270 without Georgia," Kemp said.
But he added that Georgia "should be one that we win if we have all the mechanics that we need. And I’m working hard to help provide those in a lot of ways and turn the Republican vote out and make sure that we win this state in November."
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So are the Democrats.
Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, poses for a photo with supporters at the Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport in Savannah, Ga., Aug. 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
"The Georgia Democratic coordinated campaign is running the largest in-state operation of any Democratic presidential campaign cycle, with over 190 Democratic coordinated campaign staff in 24 coordinated offices across the state," the Harris campaign touted hours ahead of the vice president's arrival in Savannah.
This is Harris' second stop in Georgia since taking over for Biden as the party's standard-bearer. She previously hosted a large rally in downtown Atlanta.
But this time around, Harris is barnstorming through the southern part of the state, far from Atlanta and its growing suburbs, which make up nearly 60% of Georgia's population. The traditional route for Democrats to win statewide in Georgia is to concentrate on metropolitan Atlanta.
But Quentin Fulks, who was principal deputy campaign manager under Biden and has remained in that role with Harris, is following the playbook from two years ago when he steered Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock's narrow re-election victory over GOP challenger Hershel Walker. The strategy is to not only win big in Atlanta and its suburbs, but also to stay competitive in the rest of the state.
"We have to make sure that we are competing everywhere across the state," Fulks said Tuesday in an interview on MSNBC. "We're going to continue to run in rural counties. …. We have to be statewide in that state and even compete in counties that Democrats don't traditionally go. That is how you win statewide in Georgia."
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The Harris campaign noted that "campaigning in Southeast Georgia is critical as it represents a diverse coalition of voters, including rural, suburban and urban Georgians — with a large proportion of Black voters and working-class families."
Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris speaks to marching band members at Liberty County High School in Hinesville, Ga., Wednesday, Aug. 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin) (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
The first stop for Harris and Walz was Liberty County High School in Hinesville, where they met with the school's administrators, faculty, students and stopped in on the school's marching band rehearsal.
The vice president said she was in band when she was in high school, according to a pool report, adding "all that practice makes for beautiful music … and that is a metaphor for everything that you will do in your lives"
The Republican National Committee took aim at Harris as her bus tour got underway.
"While our highly engaged and energetic operation in Georgia is focused on turning out votes across the entire state, Democrats in Georgia are finally learning an important lesson…there is more to Georgia than just Atlanta," RNC spokesperson Morgan Ackley said.
Ackley emphasized that "Republicans from Catoosa to Camden County and everywhere in between are fired up and ready to re-elect President Donald J. Trump because his message of putting America first again resonates with Americans of all backgrounds."
But the Harris campaign appears to enjoy a large organizational advantage over Trump's team in Georgia. And Republican strategists agreed that to recapture Georgia, Trump will need assistance from Kemp's well-oiled and funded political machine to turn out GOP voters.
Former President Trump, right, is joined by his running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, during at a campaign rally at Georgia State University in Atlanta Aug. 3, 2024. (AP Photo/John Bazemore)
Trump last week praised Kemp as he worked to patch up differences he's had with the Georgia governor dating back to the 2020 election.
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Kemp on Thursday will join his wife, Georgia first lady Marty Kemp, and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who served in the Trump administration, to headline a fundraiser in Atlanta for the former president.
"It’s my belief that we cannot afford four more years of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris or Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, which I think would probably be worse than even Biden and Harris were," the governor argued.
"I believe Republicans need to stay focused on litigating Kamala Harris and Joe Biden’s record. … We need to be telling people why they should vote for us, what we’re going to do to make things better than they are right now."
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