Vice President Kamala Harris capped a two-day campaign swing through South Georgia late Thursday afternoon with a rally in Savannah.
The newly minted Democratic presidential nominee pulled no punches in describing the race against Republican former President Donald Trump as an uphill battle.
“This is going to be a tight race until the very end,” Harris told cheering supporters at the 9,500-seat Enmarket Arena. “We are running as the underdog. We have some hard work ahead of us. But we like hard work and, with your help, we’re going to win in November!”
Harris’ description of a close election was reflected in a FOX News poll released Wednesday that showed Harris leading Trump in Georgia by two points, well within the poll’s 3% margin of error.
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But that represents significant progress for the Democrats considering President Joe Biden trailed Trump in the Peach State before Biden dropped out of the race last month and threw his support behind Harris. The surge by Harris has put Georgia back in play, prompting her and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Democrats’ nominee for vice president, to head to Georgia Wednesday and Thursday.
The pair went on a bus tour of Coastal Georgia that dipped south to Liberty County High School in Hinesville on Wednesday and into Savannah’s Historic District on Thursday. Harris also took time out Thursday afternoon to record an interview with CNN, her first in-depth interview of the campaign.
At the rally, Harris touted what she would do if elected president and warned what a second Trump term could mean for Americans.
She vowed to build an “opportunity economy,” which has become a campaign theme, “so that every American has the opportunity to own a home, start a business, and build wealth.”
Harris said she would work to prevent price gouging at America’s grocery stores, cap the cost of prescription drugs, and provide $6,000 in assistance to families during the first year of each child’s life.
“Unlike Donald Trump, I will always put middle-class families and working-class families first,” she said.
In contrast, Harris said Trump would push for additional tax cuts for billionaires and big corporations on top of the tax-cut measure Congress passed in 2017 during his first year in office, which has been widely criticized as skewing toward upper-income Americans.
She criticized Trump for appointing the three U.S. Supreme Court justices who helped provide the court’s majority two years ago in overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade guaranteeing decision abortion rights.
“This is a fight for freedom, like the freedom of a woman to make decisions about her own body and not have the government tell her what to do,” Harris said.
Republicans gave Harris a measure of credit for venturing outside of metro Atlanta to campaign in heavily Republican South Georgia, something few Democratic candidates for president in done. In fact, no candidate for president had traveled to Savannah to campaign since the 1990s.
But Michael Whatley, chairman of the Republican National Committee, said the strategy won’t help Harris win the state’s 16 electoral votes.
“(Georgians) know America cannot afford another four years of Kamala Harris’ failed, weak and dishonest leadership,” Whatley said. “Georgians are suffering under Harris’ dangerously liberal agenda that put criminals back onto the streets, brought an invasion of illegal immigrants in to Georgia’s suburbs and college campuses, and allowed drugs to pour into the state’s cities.”
