Harris turns her 2024 defeat into a rallying cry for Georgia Democrats
One by one, former Vice President Kamala Harris ticked through the emotions she and other Democrats felt after her defeat to Donald Trump.
Anger. Depression. Sadness. Frustration. A sense of helplessness and powerlessness.
She understood the frustration of watching Trump’s actions unfold from the sidelines, she told hundreds of cheering students Thursday in Atlanta, and feeling powerless to stop him.
“Well, that moment has passed,” Harris said Thursday. Now, she said, is the “moment where we turn that anger into action.”
It was a fiery closing argument from the former Democratic presidential nominee, who returned to Georgia to mobilize Black and younger voters who will help decide the midterm elections.
A crowd started gathering outside the Clark Atlanta University Student Center two hours before the political rally.
Students from schools within the Atlanta University Center prepared for Harris’ visit with banners from the former vice president’s 2024 presidential campaign. Members of Harris’ sorority — Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated — celebrated the visit wearing their organization’s colors.
Harris’ visit to Clark Atlanta University and Macon came as Georgia shattered its midterm early voting record, with nearly 2.5 million in-person ballots cast.
And Democrats are increasingly confident that a wave of opposition to Trump could help them flip the Governor’s Mansion for the first time in decades, defend Jon Ossoff’s U.S. Senate seat and win a slew of down-ballot races.
But record turnout alone offers no guarantee of a Democratic victory. Republicans are scrambling to energize their own voters to deliver a strong Election Day showing.
The closely watched votes have turned Georgia into a magnet for political heavyweights. Former President Barack Obama rallied Democrats on Wednesday. Harris will be back in Atlanta on Friday.
Across the aisle, Trump made the second of two visits to Georgia on Saturday. And Rick Jackson, the GOP nominee for governor, is mounting his own furious push, with a sweep of stops Thursday across northeast Georgia.
At a rally in Gainesville, Jackson leaned heavily on his experience as foster child to make the pitch that he has voters’ backs.
“It’s so personal to me,” he said. “It’s the best way to stand up for people whose struggles I understand. And I feel a deep responsibility to get things right for them.”
By contrast, Jackson said Keisha Lance Bottoms put herself first when she was mayor of Atlanta — especially in her handling of racial protests in 2020. Jackson said he would “back the blue 110%,” while Bottoms had “sided with criminals over victims.”
“Public safety is not a left issue or a right issue,” Jackson told the crowd in Gainesville. “It is a basic promise that the government owes every family. And the governor sets the tone.”
State Rep. Houston Gaines, a GOP candidate for an open U.S. House seat, delivered a sharper warning, describing Democrat Bottoms as “potentially the worst mayor of Atlanta” in the city’s history.
“We have got to get our friends and family out to vote because if we wake up on Wednesday and Keisha Lance Bottoms is our next governor, she will do exactly what she did to the city of Atlanta,” Gaines said.
‘Knows how to fight’
The competing campaign swings come as Georgia’s early voting electorate comes into sharper focus.
Democratic leaders are trying to temper their optimism about surging turnout in left-leaning parts of the state and other signs that early voting is tilting heavily in their favor.
Black voters, the backbone of the Democratic coalition, account for roughly one-third of early ballots. Women are also voting in disproportionate numbers. Plus, more than 460,000 Georgians who have already cast ballots skipped the 2022 midterm election.
But the numbers show who is voting, not how they are voting. And Republicans are counting on a strong Election Day turnout to offset Democratic gains.
That helps explain why Democrats are making such an aggressive final push to mobilize Black voters, whose turnout could prove decisive across the ballot.
In Macon, Harris praised Ossoff as a politician who is “always lifting up the voices of the people” and Bottoms as someone who “knows how to fight.”
“This is such an exciting moment because Georgia has such extraordinary candidates,” she said. “This is such an exciting battle.”
And at a party-like rally at Clark Atlanta University, she drew thunderous cheers as she accused Trump’s administration of acting with a “level of cruelty like we have never seen.”
For Harris, it was a return to the state she narrowly lost to Trump in 2024, this time hoping to help Democrats turn their frustration with his presidency into votes.
Republicans greeted her visit with scorn.
“Few people can match Kamala Harris’ failed record, but Keisha Lance Bottoms comes close,” said Anna Marian Block of the Republican Governors Association. “Put these two on the same team, and not even (UGA football coach) Kirby Smart could coach them to a win.”
But for lifelong Georgia Democrats, Harris brought a dose of star power to a final frenzied push. Wendy Kane, a 66-year-old who has been knocking on doors around Warner Robins for weeks, said she’s pulling out all the stops to urge Democrats to vote early.
“Trying to really give them a little boost — a kick in the butt,” she said. “Get them there, take them there, drag them there — whatever we’ve got to do.”
