ice President Kamala Harris at a Savannah rally on Aug. 29, 2024. (Photo by Ross Williams/Georgia Recorder)
SAVANNAH, Georgia – Vice President Kamala Harris got a warm welcome in Savannah Thursday when she stumped for votes in the coastal city not usually visited by Democratic presidential candidates.
“Georgia, for the past two election cycles, voters in this very state, you, Georgia, have delivered.” she said. “You sent two extraordinary senators to Washington. You sent President Biden and me to the White House. You showed up. You knocked on doors. You registered voters to vote and made it happen. You did that. You did that. And so now we are asking you to do it again.”
Harris’ speech hit familiar notes. She sought to paint Republican nominee former president Donald Trump as only caring for himself and the wealthy elite and pledged to fight for a fairer economy, to restore reproductive freedom, and to protect democracy from Trump, who she characterized as a would-be dictator.
“Understand this is not 2016 or 2020,” she said. “Things are different. A lot is the same when we think about the issues, and then there is significant difference. The stakes in 2024 are even higher.”
Betting on South Georgia
On Wednesday, Harris and Walz dropped in on a high school band in Liberty County and then the Sand Fly barbecue joint just outside of Savannah. It was a rare visit by a Democratic presidential candidate to an area of Georgia that is far away from vote-rich metro Atlanta, and it conjured up memories of former President Bill Clinton’s South Georgia bus tour in 1992 – dubbed “Bubbas for Bill” – that blazed a path through the heart of the region three decades ago.
Harris briefly visited Dottie’s Market and The Grey restaurant in the city’s historic district before taking the stage Thursday.
Harris supporters at a rally in Savannah on Aug. 29, 2024. Ross Williams/Georgia Recorder
The coastal city was the setting for Harris and Walz’s first in-depth interview since becoming the official Democratic nominees. The two were interviewed Thursday afternoon by CNN’s Dana Bash at Kim’s Café, a local Black-owned restaurant, while hundreds of supporters gathered in the rain about a mile away for the rally. The segment aired after the rally.
Harris was pressed on some of her changing positions over time, such as on whether to ban fracking, and she defended Biden’s mental fitness.
“I think the most important and most significant aspect of my policy perspective and decisions is my values have not changed,” Harris said.
She also filled in more specifics on her plans, including saying she would appoint a Republican to her cabinet. The Democrats’ nominating convention in Chicago featured a surprising string of conservative voices, including a speech from former Georgia Republican Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan.
“I have spent my career inviting diversity of opinion. I think it’s important to have people at the table when some of the most important decisions are being made that have different views, different experiences,” Harris said. “And I think it would be to the benefit of the American public to have a member of my cabinet who was a Republican.”
The visit to Savannah is the first for a general election presidential candidate since Clinton’s, the campaign said.
Democrats say campaigning in southeast Georgia will be critical to their election efforts to court suburban and rural voters, and they tout nearly 50 full-time staff across seven offices in South Georgia.
Other than Savannah and Liberty County, southwest Georgia is beet red, said University of Georgia political science professor Charles Bullock.
“What I think the purpose of this tour is going to be is not that they think they’re going to flip some of those red counties, but to chip away at the size of the Trump margin in them,” he said.
“And again, we’re talking about, you know, 10,000, 15,000 votes determining the outcome in the state. If Democrats can indeed peel off, say, some football fans who like the coach [a nickname for vice presidential nominee Gov. Tim Walz] or something like this, it’s a gain for them.”
“The most valuable commodity that any candidate has is the candidate’s time,” he added. “You can raise more money, you can get more volunteers, you can hire more staff. You can’t create more time, and so this is a huge investment.”
Southern strategy
Thursday’s rally came a week after the Republican candidate for vice president, J.D. Vance, delivered a speech on immigration and border security in Valdosta near the Florida state line.
Vance’s South Georgia backdrop can be seen as a nod to Republican Gov. Brian Kemp’s strategy of trying to run up the score in rural parts of the state, said James LaPlant, a political scientist and dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Valdosta State University.
But the Harris-Walz campaign appears to also be taking a page from the playbook of U.S. Sens. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff. The pair of Georgia Democrats flipped the state’s two Senate seats in early 2021, partly by energizing communities across the state that have often been ignored by Democratic candidates.
“That was, I think, an important flip to Democratic strategy that, ‘Hey, we’re not going to ignore South Georgia. We’re not going to ignore places like Valdosta. We’re not going to ignore the southeast quadrant of the state,” LaPlant said.
Georgia is now lumped into a tier of swing states branded the Sun Belt states, but LaPlant said he still sees Trump as having an edge here. That is an advantage, though, that will continue to slip away from him if he does not find his footing in the dramatically transformed presidential race, said LaPlant.
“The cold reality is that Trump is struggling in terms of how to message his campaign with Harris-Walz as the ticket,” LaPlant said. “If those struggles continue over the next 70-some days, then I think Georgia is very much in play.”
The Trump campaign was not impressed with Harris’ southern strategy, said RNC spokesperson Morgan Ackley
“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,” Ackley said in a statement. “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.”
Vibes
An enthusiastic crowd packed into Enmarket Arena in Savannah with most seats appearing full.
Some people in the crowd were soaked to the bone while waiting in line to enter the arena after a sudden afternoon shower drenched the area. Latecomers had the opposite problem as the clouds parted and the parking lot outside the arena became hot and humid.
Harris supporters line up in a downpour outside Enmarket Arena in Savannah on Aug. 29, 2024. Ross Williams/Georgia Recorder
But despite weather woes, the crowd was generally smiling. People huddled under umbrellas or cooled themselves with fans reading “Georgia for Harris-Walz” as merchants hawked slightly damp Kamala Harris T-shirts and hats.
“You’re gonna see a lot of happy people out here, because they – especially a lot of Black women, a lot of Black women – finally get a chance to see somebody running for the highest office in the land who looks like them,” said Thomas McCormick, a Dublin resident who said he’s voting for Harris to stop Project 2025.
Project 2025 is a nearly 900-page proposal that sets forth a sweeping conservative agenda if Trump is elected. Despite Trump distancing himself from the platform, some former members of his administration helped write it.
McCormick called President Joe Biden a “great civil servant,” but he said there was no question his departure from the race and Harris’ elevation helped contribute to the festive atmosphere.
“No disrespect to Joe. He’s been a servant for years, and that’s perfectly fine. But there’s a different vibe because there’s a different atmosphere. We have a different candidate,” he said.
Not far away, Paris Hall, a Georgia Southern University student originally from North Florida chatted with a group of friends as they waited in line. Hall said the atmosphere was electric.
“It’s a lot of pride, the fact that people can just come out here and show up and express their views and their beliefs and their opinions and to do it together as a community,” she said. “I love being around everyone here. I’ve seen several people doing interviews, and everybody has their signs, you see a lot of the different sororities, all the organizations just coming up together as a community and showing for the people that they support.”
Another factor likely bolstering the mood was recent polling, including a Fox News poll showing Harris leading by two points in Georgia – an encouraging sign for Democrats, but within the margin of error. Harris urged the crowd not to take victory for granted.
“This is going to be a tight race until the very end, so let’s not pay too much attention to the polls, because we are running as the underdog,” Harris said. “And we have some hard work ahead of us, but we like hard work, hard work is good work. And with your help, we are going to win this November.”
This story first appeared in the Georgia Recorder, a member with the Phoenix in the nonprofit States Newsroom. Georgia Recorder Deputy Editor Jill Nolin contributed to this report.