This story was updated on Wednesday, July 31 at 5:03 p.m.
Four weeks after President Joe Biden arrived in Georgia for a debate that unraveled his reelection bid, Vice President Kamala Harris brought her newly-minted campaign to Atlanta as she looks to turn the burst of energy from a fresh ticket into a force of volunteers and donors that can last through November.
“Georgia, it feels good to be back,” Harris told a boisterous crowd at the Georgia State University Convocation Center. “And I am very clear that the path to the White House runs right through this state.”
For most of this summer, many Democrats had become increasingly downbeat about capturing Georgia’s electoral votes. But as Harris rallied with top Georgia Democrats and rappers Megan Thee Stallion and Quavo, the transformation of the Democratic campaign for the White House was on full display.
“The momentum in this race is shifting and there are signs that Donald Trump is feeling it,” Harris said.
The Harris campaign says 10,000 people attended the rally, and hundreds of thousands more watched online.
With Atlanta as the backdrop, Harris wielded a city culture steeped in hip-hop and the Civil Rights Movement to make clear that this is no longer Biden’s campaign.
“I don’t have to tell folks in Atlanta that generations of America lead the fight for freedom,” Harris said. “And now the baton is in our hands.”
The vice president quoted Georgia native Quavo, who helped found the hip-hop group Migos, as she criticized former President Donald Trump for nixing a bipartisan immigration bill in Congress. “Or as my friend Quavo would say, he does not walk it like he talks it,” Harris said to resounding cheers.
And as a “Hotties for Harris” sign unfurled in the stands, Megan Thee Stallion told the crowd, “If you want to keep loving your bodies, you know who to vote for,” referencing her 2020 song “Body” and the rollback of abortion rights since the overturn of Roe v. Wade.
Harris also addressed Trump directly, challenging him to debate her.
“As the saying goes, if you’ve got something to say, say it to my face,” she said.
Trump had previously agreed to a September debate with Biden, but has recently raised doubts about whether he would hold that date to face off against Harris. In a Tuesday statement, the Republican National Committee called Harris’ Georgia visit “performative” and attacked her record on immigration.
Trump and his running mate, U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, will headline a Saturday rally at the same venue as both campaigns compete for votes in Georgia.
Democrats hope campaign shakeup puts Georgia back in play
As Biden’s polling sagged after that first debate in Atlanta, the campaign began signaling they would prioritize holding Blue Wall states Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. The emerging Sun Belt battlegrounds like Georgia seemed more of a stretch. But Emory University Professor Andra Gillespie says the campaign shake-up may shift that landscape if Harris can galvanize Georgia’s Black, Latino and Asian American voters.
“She has the ingredients to make the state more competitive than it was a month ago,” Gillespie says. “But you can’t just assume that because she’s a woman of color, all of a sudden people are going to turn out and vote for her. She has to ask for their vote.”
The Harris Campaign brushed aside questions on Monday about any shifts in the battleground map.
“The vice president is strong in both the Blue Wall and in the Sun Belt and we are running hard in both,” Dan Kanninen, the battleground states director for the Harris campaign, told reporters.
Harris has been a regular presence in Atlanta. Tuesday’s rally was her 15th trip to Georgia since assuming the vice presidency and her sixth in 2024. According to the campaign, Harris will return to Savannah next week to campaign with her running mate.
At a Juneteenth barbecue in the Sweet Auburn neighborhood last month, Harris said people have started asking whether she is moving to Georgia. “I said, maybe!” Harris joked.
At that barbecue, Atlanta voter Val Acree admitted she was a little nervous about the 2024 campaign, but told WABE she would do whatever she could to combat disinformation and disengagement. Now, Acree says, “I’m energized and more optimistic than ever” and feels Democrats have a better shot at winning Georgia than they did a month ago.
Still, Trump leads Harris in most swing state polls, including in Georgia, though his edge seems to be narrowing. A Bloomberg poll published Tuesday suggested Harris has erased Trump’s lead in several swing states.
Republicans swept statewide races in the 2022 midterms in Georgia, with the exception of the Senate seat held by Democratic U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock. Warnock and Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff flipped Georgia’s Senate seats blue in 2021 and spoke at the rally.
To win Georgia this year, Harris will have to again muster the coalition of voters of color, suburban and independent-minded voters that delivered the state for Biden in 2020.
Voter Deanna McKay cast her vote for Trump in 2016 and Biden in 2020. She was already struggling to decide between the two when Biden bombed during the June debate. After that, McKay decided she would likely sit out the presidential election entirely.
Now she says she’s “still very stuck, but might vote for Harris now.”
Kerry Webster has also been undecided and says the shakeup has made her decision even more fraught.
“She certainly is more likable (than Trump),” Webster says of Harris. “I still think of how much better the economy was under Trump and how much lower inflation was, which are the biggest concerns I personally have.”
For Acree, she is hoping Harris can activate women in the “movable middle” around reproductive rights and believes the vice president can be a more effective messenger on abortion than Biden. Even though Acree is feeling recharged by the new presumptive nominee, she says she is not sleeping any easier.
“After Hillary’s unexpected defeat in 2016, I did have some anxiety about America’s readiness to elect a woman, particularly a woman of color,” Acree says.
But these days, Acree’s lack of sleep is driven less by anxiety about the ticket and more by her hunger to consume every news update about the race. Acree says she wants to make sure she is as informed as she can be when she talks to friends and neighbors about getting engaged with the election.
When Harris took the stage in Atlanta on Tuesday night, Acree was in the audience cheering her on.
WABE’s Rahul Bali contributed to this report.
