What Kamala Harris’ musical guests say about her campaign strategy

On Saturday, her rally at Lakewood Amphitheatre featured the R&B star Usher, who joined Harris in the middle of his sold-out three-date tour in Atlanta. A few days earlier, he also appeared at a Black-owned roller skating rink to urge young, diverse Georgians to vote.

Credit: TNS

Credit: TNS

Later today, rock legend Bruce Springsteen will kick off the first of a series of battleground state concerts at Harris’ joint rally with former President Barack Obama in Clarkston. The Boss’ fan base is enormous, but it tends to skew older and whiter. Think suburban swing voter.

Former President Donald Trump plays primarily to the GOP base — his Wednesday rally featured pyrotechnics, Tucker Carlson and country singer Jason Aldean. But Harris must win a significant group of independents and ex-Republicans to recapture Georgia.

Her swing-voter two-step reminds us of another Georgia Democrat’s strategy in the final stretch of a pivotal race. During the 2022 runoff, U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock brought in Obama to motivate the base and Dave Matthews to jazz up moderates.

Middle-aged white suburbanite voters crammed into a Cobb County theater in late November to hear the Dave Matthews Band front man perform an acoustic set and urge Warnock backers to cast their votes early. Some in the crowd waited hours.

Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC

Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC

“Tell everyone to vote for Senator Warnock,” Matthews implored the audience. “And tell them not to vote if they’re not gonna.”

You know the rest. Warnock defeated scandal-plagued Republican Herschel Walker in the December vote, and after the dust settled, his campaign manager Quentin Fulks credited the dual strategy.

“I’m sure there’s some operative out there when tasked with running a race against Walker who might have said, ‘We’re just going to run as far left as we can.’ We didn’t do that,” said Fulks. “But we also didn’t take our base for granted.”

Fulks may have had something to do with this week’s campaign trail lineup. He now serves as one of Harris’ top deputies.

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Credit: Rebecca Blackwell/AP

Credit: Rebecca Blackwell/AP

GOOD MORNING. We’re just 12 days away from the presidential election and Georgia remains a priority for the campaigns. Keep up with our presidential candidate visit tracker.

Here are a few things to know today:

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Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC

Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC

SPOTTED. Gwinnett County may be trending Democratic, but plenty of Republican elected officials showed up Wednesday for former President Donald Trump’s rally at Gas South Arena.

They included Agriculture Commissioner Tyler Harper; House Majority Leader Chuck Efstration, R-Auburn; state Sen. Clint Dixon, R-Gwinnett; state Rep. Tim Fleming, R-Covington; and U.S. Reps. Andrew Clyde, R-Athens; Mike Collins, R-Jackson; and Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Rome.

Also on hand were Faith & Freedom Coalition founder Ralph Reed, former U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler, Georgia GOP Chair Josh McKoon and former Chair David Shafer, who made it to his second Trump event in a week. Shafer remains under indictment in Fulton County, along with Trump, for his role in Trump’s Georgia election interference case.

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Credit: Seeger Gray/AJC

Credit: Seeger Gray/AJC

COME AGAIN? Georgia Republicans were quick to blame Democrats for the demise of some new rules that had been approved by the conservative majority on the State Election Board.

“Democrats and their allies have made sure these rules won’t be in force for the 2024 election,” Republican Party Chair Josh McKoon wrote on X.

“Yet another case driven by Democrat lawfare,” U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Rome, posted on X.

But it was a Republican, not a Democrat, who filed the lawsuit that ultimately led to the rules being blocked.

Scot Turner, a former Republican state lawmaker, argued in court the State Election Board had exceeded its authority. And the court agreed with him.

Turner is no symbolic Republican. He likes to describe his voting record in the Legislature as the most conservative in decades, and he sometimes bucked the party line to vote against GOP-backed measures he thought betrayed conservative values.

Of course, Democrats (loudly) opposed these rules. They even filed their own lawsuit to block them. But their lawsuit wasn’t the one the court ruled on.

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Credit: Evan Vucci/AP

Credit: Evan Vucci/AP

THE “H” WORD. Donald Trump’s fiercest critics often call him a fascist, including comparing the former president to the most notorious dictator associated with that moniker: Adolf Hitler.

The Hitler comparisons have picked up steam this week after John Kelly, Trump’s former chief of staff, told the New York Times and the Atlantic that the former president would often speak favorably of the German authoritarian leader who orchestrated the massacre of more than 6 million Jews.

“He commented more than once that, ‘You know, Hitler did some good things, too,’” Kelly told the Times.

Vice President Kamala Harris on Wednesday called those comments “a window into who Donald Trump really is, from the people who know him best.”

The Trump campaign accused Harris of spreading “outright lies and falsehoods” and said her “dangerous rhetoric is directly to blame for the multiple assassination attempts against President Trump.”

Trump’s allies defended him during a rally in Duluth on Wednesday. Robert F. Kenney Jr. called Kelly a member of the “deep state.” And U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene called the reports “the same mainstream fake news crap that we have been hearing for eight years now.

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Credit: Ben Gray for the AJC

Credit: Ben Gray for the AJC

FOREIGN INTERFERENCE. State officials said they successfully fended off a cyberattack on Georgia’s election system that likely came from a foreign country, as first reported by CNN.

“This was a big win for our cyber security team and our partners,” Gabriel Sterling, the chief deputy to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, wrote on X. “We work everyday to protect Georgia voters and our systems.”

CNN said that the state worked with a third-party tech firm to fend off hackers who tried to disable a website used by voters to request and track absentee ballots.

Georgia voters have until Friday to request a mail-in ballot.

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Credit: Natrice Miller/AJC

Credit: Natrice Miller/AJC

FOSTER CARE. A Democrat from Georgia is teaming up with a Republican from Texas to change how states monitor children in their foster care systems.

U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff is teaming up with U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, on a bill that would require states to track so-called “hidden” foster care placements, the AJC’s Katherine Landergan reports.

Child welfare officials will sometimes informally place a child with another family member or someone close to the family. These placements happen outside the oversight of a court and aren’t reported to the federal government.

Ossoff said the bill was inspired by a case in Georgia where a mother, Rachel Aldridge, repeatedly told Georgia’s child welfare agency that they had placed her 2-year-old daughter in a dangerous home. Aldridge’s daughter was later murdered.

There’s been a push in recent years by some child welfare advocates to keep children with family members as much as possible, as studies indicate it improves mental health and behavior. Ossoff said his bill would not ban these informal placements, but said it would require more oversight so policymakers can make better decisions on how to protect children.

“We have to understand the extent of these placements and how they’re being managed,” he said.

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Credit: Hyosub Shin/AJC

Credit: Hyosub Shin/AJC

LISTEN UP. Today on “Politically Georgia,” state Rep. Chuck Efstration, R-Auburn, talks about the growing demographics in Gwinnett County. Then, former Democratic state Sen. Jen Jordan talks about the gender gap in the latest AJC poll.

Be sure to download the AJC’s Politically Georgia podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Episodes are uploaded by noon each day, just in time to have lunch with us. You can also listen live at 10 a.m. EDT on 90.1 FM WABE. Have a question for the show? Give us a call at 770-810-5297.

On Wednesday’s show, the hosts interviewed U.S. Rep. Lucy McBath, D-Marietta, and Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger during a Politically Georgia On the Road event in Buckhead. The show also included a panel discussion from the AJC’s political contributors Carolyn Bourdeaux, Geoff Duncan and Megan Myers Hanson along with Dekalb County CEO Michael Thurmond.

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Credit: Matt Rourke/AP

Credit: Matt Rourke/AP

HARRIS GOES BIG. Even before any official announcement, the location of Vice President Kamala Harris’ rally this evening started to leak because of all the preparations that were underway.

Hallford Stadium in Clarkston, which has a capacity of nearly 16,000, will be the site of today’s campaign event where former President Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen will join Harris on the stage. Director Spike Lee, actor Samuel L. Jackson and filmmaker Tyler Perry are also on the program.

Residents and businesses were told Wednesday to prepare for heavy traffic, and nearby schools notified parents they had decided to release students early.

Harris’ team had initially planned to hold the event at a venue in Gwinnett County. There was a need for a larger venue when Springsteen was added to the lineup.

Several speakers during former President Donald Trump’s rally Wednesday at Gas South Arena in Duluth said that she can’t attract crowds that compete with the size of his, estimated at roughly 15,000.

We’ll see in a few hours whether they’ll have to eat their words.

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Credit: AP

Credit: AP

ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL. Today’s happenings:

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Credit: Steve Schaefer/AJC

Credit: Steve Schaefer/AJC

HELENE HELP. Georgia U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock’s staff is planning two events to help people in Treutlen and Glascock counties connect with federal resources following the damage from Hurricane Helene.

Staff members will be at the Treutlen County Commission building on Friday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and again from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. They’ll be at the Glascock Senior Center on Monday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and again from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m.

If you go, you need to be prepared with the following information:

Additionally, FEMA has opened Disaster Recovery Centers in Chatham, Liberty and Toombs counties to provide help to Georgians affected by the hurricane.

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AS ALWAYS, send your best scoops, gossip and insider info to greg.bluestein@ajc.com, tia.mitchell@ajc.com, patricia.murphy@ajc.com and adam.beam@ajc.com.