The vice president on Wednesday began a bus tour in the rural southeastern corner of the state, as her campaign focuses heavily on Georgia and North Carolina, another Sun Belt battleground.
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Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, arriving in Georgia on Wednesday. The state is now considered a tossup.
Vice President Kamala Harris, aiming to go on offense against former President Donald J. Trump in Georgia, kicked off a bus tour on Wednesday in the rural southeastern corner of the battleground state.
Ms. Harris’s trip emphasizes a growing sense of optimism among Georgia Democrats that she could hold on to the state, which President Biden narrowly won in 2020. The Democratic ticket’s standing in the polls there has increased significantly since Mr. Biden dropped out of the race, although Ms. Harris still trails Mr. Trump, according to a New York Times polling average. Her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, joined her for the two-day bus tour, which is meant in part to mobilize rural Black voters and will culminate with a rally in Savannah.
The bus carrying Ms. Harris and Mr. Walz is emblazoned with the words “A New Way Forward,” which has become one of their campaign slogans as Democrats try to portray Mr. Trump as a creature of the past.
In her first stop on Wednesday, Ms. Harris visited a high school in Hinesville, Ga., a city of roughly 35,000 where nearly one in two residents are Black, to hear the school band play. After the performance, she stressed the importance of practice to the student musicians — comments that could have reflected on her own sudden journey from serving as vice president to becoming the Democratic nominee.
“It requires a whole lot of rehearsal, a whole lot of practice, long hours, right?” said Ms. Harris, adding that she, too, had played in school bands. “Sometimes you hit the note, sometimes you don’t, right? But all that practice makes for beautiful music, and that is a metaphor — that is symbolic — for everything that you all will do in your life.”
The bus tour’s route takes the candidates through a part of the state not often visited by Democrats, underscoring the campaign’s efforts to motivate rural voters. That is true not just in Georgia, but also in nearby North Carolina, a demographically similar Sunbelt state.
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Source: nytimes.com
