With Georgians shattering early voting records, Vice President Kamala Harris held a Saturday rally in Atlanta that aimed to appeal to Black voters who could make or break her campaign and the swing voters who helped propel Joe Biden to office.
Throughout her stop at Lakewood Amphitheater, she appealed to liberals and other core Democratic loyalists who she needs to turn out in droves, while also trumpeting the Republicans who are backing her campaign against former President Donald Trump.
“It’s time to turn the page,” Harris told an estimated 11,000 supporters. “America is ready to chart a new way forward. We are ready for a new and optimistic generation of leadership. Which is why Democrats, Republicans and independents are supporting our campaign.”
And as she promised to expand abortion rights, she singled out the story of Amber Thurman, the Georgia woman who died from abortion-related complications in the weeks after the state’s fetal cardiac law took effect.
Before renewing a vow to fight to reinstate Roe v. Wade to Thurman’s parents, who held her picture in the crowd, Harris accused Trump of “belittling” her death during a Fox News town hall in Atlanta’s northern exurbs when he suggested Thurman’s grieving parents would get poor ratings for talking about their daughter.
“Where is the compassion?” she said, adding: “There’s this backward notion that somehow the measure of the strength of a leader is based on who you beat down instead of what we know: Which is that the real measure of the strength of the leader is based on who you lift up.”
Her stop, her largest rally in Georgia this campaign, doubled as a star-studded pep rally as R&B legend Usher joined the Democratic nominee onstage to appeal to voters to rush to the polls for Harris.
“I’m counting on you — we can make a difference in this election,” said Usher, who is in the middle of a sold-out three-date tour in Atlanta.
But there was also a concerted effort to reach out to independents and mainstream Republicans who fueled Biden’s narrow victory in 2020 and boosted the winning U.S. Senate bids of both Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock.
“You should hear what Republican senators say about Donald Trump when the microphones are off,” said Ossoff. “There are a lot of elected Republicans who know the man is unfit for the presidency.”
Early voting has already surpassed 1.2 million votes, breaking a string of state records. It’s too early to tell which candidate the surge to the polls could help, but Democrats are stepping up efforts to rev up early voting areas in deep-blue areas like Atlanta.
The vice president has focused more recently on the “blue wall” states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin in the closing days of the race. But the repeat visits to Atlanta also show she’s not ignoring Georgia and other Sun Belt battlegrounds.
She will attend a “souls to the polls” event Sunday at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in south DeKalb. And she’s set to return on Thursday for her first joint rally with former President Barack Obama.
Trump, meanwhile, held a rally at the Cobb Energy Center last week and is set to headline another event in Gwinnett County on Wednesday. He canceled a Tuesday stop in Savannah.
His campaign painted the Harris rally, and its use of star power, as a “desperate, last-minute plea to win over Georgians” as polls show a neck-and-neck race between the two rivals in the battleground state.
Trump spokeswoman Morgan Ackley said the Democrat has “finally realized her strategy of gaslighting Georgians isn’t quite sticking.”
Polls show Harris and Trump in a tight race in Georgia, which narrowly voted Democratic in 2020 for the first time in nearly three decades. And both campaigns are vigorously working to rebuild the coalitions that have brought them success in the past.
For Democrats, that means reassembling the group of liberal, Black and swing voters that powered Biden to his razor-thin win. Harris devoted large parts of her speech to promoting her abortion rights stances.
Ossoff, who stands for a second term in 2026, challenged voters from both parties to band together to defeat him.
“In Georgia, we believe in loyalty to the Constitution — not to a strong man,” Ossoff said, adding: “This is deeper than Democrats versus Republicans. It’s about the character of our nation.”
The tight polls have made Harris supporters increasingly antsy as November nears. Interviews with more than a dozen voters revealed a range of emotions, from anxiety to optimism. Several said they were feeling queasy.
“I’m nervous,” said Mike Diamond, an East Cobb Democrat. “We cannot take four more years of Donald Trump. If you believe half the things he says, he will destroy our country. And there’s nowhere to run.”
On the stage, Harris said voters should expect a nail-biter.
“It’s going to be a tight race until the very end. And we are the underdog. We are running as the underdog. But make no mistake: We will win.”
And before she left the crowd, she invoked another famous Georgian: former President Jimmy Carter, who cast his ballot for Harris shortly after he turned 100.
“If Jimmy Carter can vote early, you can too.”
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