Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz will launch a bus tour of southern Georgia next week, the duo’s first time campaigning together in the state and, so far, their first public event since the Democratic convention in Chicago.
The ticket will use the momentum of the party convention to propel them into the final months of the general election. In addition to the bus tour, Harris and Walz are expected to tape their first joint interview next week and attend multiple fundraisers that will likely take place in New York, California, Florida and Georgia, according to two sources familiar with the planning.
Following the tour, Harris will headline a solo rally in Savannah, Georgia. The trip will be Harris’ seventh to the state this year, and her second since launching her presidential campaign last month.
“Campaigning in this part of the Peach State is critical because it represents a diverse coalition of voters, including rural, suburban and urban Georgians — with large populations of Black voters and working-class families,” the Harris-Walz campaign said in a press release announcing the bus tour.
The visit by Harris and Walz comes as the Republican ticket ramps up its campaign in the state. Vice presidential candidate Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio held a campaign event in Valdosta on Thursday, following a rally by former President Donald Trump in Atlanta earlier this month. Republicans, too, have been trying to capitalize on polls suggesting the party could win a larger share of black and Hispanic voters this election cycle.
The bus tour through southern Georgia is expected to echo a bus tour through western Pennsylvania earlier this month, which included stops at a local campaign office, a fire station and a high school football practice.
Harris and Walz had originally planned to visit Savannah during the campaign’s state-to-state tour earlier this month, but they had to postpone the event due to Tropical Storm Debbie.
While it’s unclear exactly where Harris and Walz are headed, Southern Georgia is home to some of the state’s largest black populations, including Dougherty County, which has the second-highest percentage of black residents in the state. The campaign has opened field offices in predominantly black cities Albany and Valdosta.
“The South Georgia region is a priority for the campaign: we have nearly 50 full-time staff across seven offices in the area, including Valdosta. We have hosted over 500 events in the region since May 31,” said Adelaide Bullock, spokesperson for the Harris-Walz Georgia campaign.
Ranada Robinson, research director for the New Georgia Project Fund, said attracting Black voters in both rural and urban areas will be critical to Harris’ success in the state, just as it was to Biden’s victory in 2020.
“Black voters are the key to winning Georgia. Of course, Black Georgians can’t do it alone, but we are absolutely the reason 2020 turned out the way it did,” she said. “Black voters had a historic turnout, and it has to happen again for Georgia to win.”
Earlier this month, Harris held her second presidential campaign rally in Atlanta, an event that also featured Megan Thee Stallion. According to the campaign manager, the event drew more than 10,000 people.
It then launched a mobilization effort in the state and now has nearly 400,000 volunteers, 174 staffers and 24 coordinated campaign offices across Georgia. The campaign calls its ground game there “the largest in-state operation of a Democratic presidential campaign cycle ever in Georgia.”
Harris campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon listed Georgia as a top campaign target, pointing to changing demographics that could help the vice president expand support in 2020.
“The benefits the vice president provides to young voters, black voters, and Hispanic voters will be important to our diverse pathways to 270 electoral votes,” Dillon wrote in a recent memo.
Harris and Walz are expected to tour a number of key states around Labor Day, after which Harris will focus more on debate preparation in anticipation of her September showdown with Trump.
A Trump adviser said the campaign expects Harris to get a “boost” after the convention, but he likened it to a “sugar rush” and said they didn’t believe it would change the overall state of the race.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
