Three weeks ago, the political commentariat was writing off Georgia and talking of narrow pathways for Joe Biden to hold the White House. Georgia was a desert. Tuesday evening, an Atlanta crowd greeted Kamala Harris like she backed up a truck full of sweet tea to that desert.
It’s probably too early – nine days since the president’s withdrawal and the vice-president’s ascension – to know if sentiment in Georgia had shifted enough to justify jubilation. But the crowd in Atlanta treated the new presumptive presidential nominee as a reason to celebrate after months of her quieter campaigning in the city as the vice-presidential nominee.
“As many of you know, before I was elected vice-president … I was an elected attorney general and an elected district attorney,” Harris said after taking the stand. “Hear me when I say, I know Donald Trump’s type, and I have been dealing with people like him my entire career.”
This elicited chants of: “Lock him up!”
Harris addressed a crowd of 10,000 who filled the Georgia State Convocation Center, with people waiting outside for a seat. She touted her prosecution record and referenced Trump’s criminal convictions and the findings of fraud in his businesses.
“As an attorney general, I held big Wall Street banks accountable for fraud. Donald Trump was found guilty of fraud,” Harris said. “In this campaign, I will proudly put my record against his any day, including on the issue of immigration.”
Harris spoke of walking underground tunnels at the California border and prosecuting traffickers, and pledged to bring back the border security bill that was tanked in Congress by Republicans to preserve the issue in the campaign.
Referencing a Migos song – popular as an Atlanta group – she said: “He does not walk it as he talks it.”
Ahead of Harris’s appearance on Tuesday, several Atlanta voices made the case for her. Mayor Andre Dickens noted that this was the vice-president’s 15th time visiting the state since 2021. Harris has been in Atlanta so often that she may as well have rented a condo in Buckhead to save money.
Harris is expected back in the state next week, and will debut her running mate on a seven-stop swing state tour, according to details confirmed by her campaign. Politico reported Harris will hold the first rally in Philadelphia on Tuesday. Harris said she as of today has not yet picked the candidate yet.
For the last two years, Harris has been Joe Biden’s chief campaign surrogate in Georgia, making deliberate connections with campaign organizers and Black community leaders, a weapon in the Democratic arsenal that Republicans have not been able to match.
“Georgia is on everybody’s mind,” said Raphael Warnock, the senator and reverend, to a boisterous crowd. “And there’s a reason. Because of what you did in 2020, 2021, everybody knows that the road to the White House goes through Georgia.”
Donald Trump has been on his heels in recent polls, which show ground captured in the rust belt. The former president announced that he would refrain from committing to a debate against Harris until after the Democratic national convention, which the senator Jon Ossoff characterized as cowardice.
“I know about having an opponent who’s too scared to debate,” Ossoff said, harkening back to his winning 2020 campaign against then senator David Perdue, in which he spent 90 minutes debating an empty chair. “The candidate who is dodging debates is the candidate who is losing.”
Stacey Abrams took the stage at 5.33pm to thunderous chants of “Stacey!”, which Abrams immediately turned around into a chant for “Kamala!”
“We are the ones who put our boots on the ground,” said the former gubernatorial candidate and voting rights advocate. She preached the virtues of a progressive presidency on infrastructure development in the Black community, on job creation and on the climate. She pointedly noted that Georgia’s governor, Brian Kemp, who defeated her two years ago, took credit for new investment in solar panel manufacturing in Georgia even as the federal government has been spurring those investments.
“They started with Kamala Harris and Joe Biden believing in the environment,” she said.
Now that Harris has replaced Biden as the presumptive nominee, the question is whether there is time to capitalize on the administration’s connections in a state that may still be difficult to win for Democrats.
“When we get deep into those communities, when we are hitting apartment complexes in the hood, when we’re places we don’t usually go, I’ll know its real,” said state representative Imani Barnes, a Democrat representing a sprawling suburban district in DeKalb county near Atlanta.
Barnes’ constituents range from CDC scientists to some of the poorest immigrant communities in the state, and she can see how campaigns have to change the language on flyers to reach some voters. “That’s how we know a campaign is making a difference.”
Previous appearances in Georgia by Biden and Harris have been closely vetted campaign events filled with a curated selection of activists, advocates and party leaders. Though the guest speakers on Tuesday were a selection of federal officials and local leaders – with Geoff Duncan, the former Republican lieutenant governor, stalking the edges of the press pit – that selectivity was less evident.
“Georgia saved the whole nation,” Warnock said. “I have a feeling that Georgia is going to save the nation one more time.”
In her speech, Harris sought not only to attack her opponent but to refocus on top voter issues in Georgia, such as the economy.
“Building up the middle class will be a defining goal of my presidency,” she said. “When our middle class is strong, America is strong. To keep our middle class strong, families need relief from the high cost of living so that they have a chance not to get by but to get ahead.”
She said she would go after price gouging and hidden fees by banks and other companies, and take on corporate landlords to cap unfair rent increases, and to cap prescription drug costs.
“There are signs Donald Trump is feeling” the competition, she says.
“You may have noticed he pulled out of the debate.”
She repeated the assertion made by her campaign in recent days that Trump is “just plain weird”.
“I do hope Trump will agree to meet me on the debate stage, because as the saying goes – if you got something to say, say it to my face,” she said as the crowd exploded.
The convocation center at Georgia State University is a state-owned building. Election law requires the facility to offer its use on the same terms to the Trump campaign. Hence, Trump will appear here Saturday, offering a mark to compare their relative fortunes even as he refuses to accept debate