nova tour georgia

• Skip to main content
• Keyboard shortcuts for audio player

2024 Election

Harris is on a 2-day georgia bus tour. it’s the latest sign the state is in play.

Tamara Keith

Harris-Walz campaign hit local stops in the Sunbelt swing state of Georgia by bus

Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, disembark from their campaign bus in Savannah, Ga., on Wednesday, as they travel across Georgia on a 2-day campaign bus tour. Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Vice President Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, are back on their campaign bus. The pair are together on the campaign trail for the first time since last week’s Democratic convention. This time, they’re on a two-day bus tour of Georgia.

Their trip is taking them into areas of the state that don’t always get attention from Democratic politicians. It will also be the site of Harris’ first major network interview since becoming her party’s nominee for president, on Thursday.

The attention this week is just the latest sign that Georgia, a state President Biden narrowly won in 2020, is once again in play this election year.

“This area is a priority for the campaign: we have nearly 50 full-time staff across 7 offices in South Georgia,” said Porsha White, the Georgia state director for the Harris campaign, ahead of the trip. “This will be the first time a general election presidential candidate will have campaigned in Savannah since the 1990s.”

Vice President Harris and Gov. Tim Walz visit Sandfly Bar-B-Q restaurant in Savannah, Ga., on Wednesday. Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Upon arrival in Savannah, Harris and Walz greeted students from Savannah State University, the oldest public HBCU in Georgia, before boarding their campaign bus.

Their first stop on Wednesday was to a marching band rehearsal at Liberty County High School, which, according to U.S. News and World Report, has about 1,000 students, a majority of them “economically disadvantaged.”

The room erupted when Harris and Walz walked in, and the band played the school fight song with football players and cheerleaders in the back of the room. Leaning into his experience as a former coach, Walz gave a quick speech about teamwork. Harris told the crowd they were all leaders in their own way.

Next stop: Sandfly Bar-B-Q in Savannah, a restaurant decorated with license plates from various states. Harris and Walz were greeted by the restaurant's owner, employees and local patrons. Walz sought out a group of teachers and praised their “noble” work. He talked about the importance of optimism and insisted, “Our politics can be hopeful.” Outside, a man held a Trump flag.

Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris visits Dottie's Market in Savannah, Ga., on August 29, during the second day of a campaign bus tour. Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

On Thursday, Harris stopped by Dottie’s Market in Savannah, where she told the owner she plans to announce a tax credit to boost small business creation. “What I’m going to be rolling out next week is basically a tax credit for startups, small business startups,” she said.

Later was a rally at the city's Enmarket Arena, where she outlined her vision to "fight for America’s future" that included Medicaid expansion, focusing on middle- and working-class families and expanding reproductive rights.

Harris’ momentum continues as she ties with Trump in these swing states

It’s part of a broader strategy to reach voters in traditionally republican areas in swing states.

Savannah — like most major cities — votes strongly Democratic. But it is swimming in a sea of red — and that’s where Harris and Walz are campaigning.

“The whole point is to overperform,” said Emory University political scientist Andra Gillespie. “And so you want to overperform not just among your base, but you also want to overperform in places where you have historically been weak.”

That means campaigning far from the Democratic strongholds of Atlanta, Philadelphia and Charlotte, N.C., to narrow the margins in parts of those competitive swing states that have typically voted Republican. In other words, losing by less.

In Georgia, where reliably Republican voters still outnumber reliably Democratic ones, that’s really the only way to have a chance at winning.

“Democrats also want to perform better than they historically have in other parts of the state, so you want to be able to post stronger margins — even if they are losing margins — in other parts of the state,” Gillespie said.

Donald Trump's big get-out-the-vote strategy in Arizona and Georgia? Donald Trump

Both campaigns put money and time into georgia.

In presidential races, there are two big indicators of how campaigns are feeling about their chances in a state: time and money. Since Harris got into the race, Donald Trump and his allies have spent nearly $33 million on ads in the state, mostly trying to define Harris with pretty negative messaging. Meanwhile Harris and her allies have spent nearly $23 million, mostly on more positive ads introducing her to voters. That’s according to an NPR analysis of data from the tracking firm Ad Impact. People watching TV in Georgia are seeing a ton of campaign ads already.

Today, the Harris campaign launched its first “contrast” ad , hitting Trump and tying him to the unpopular conservative roadmap known as Project 2025 . That will be on heavy rotation in Georgia and other swing states.

Vice President Kamala Harris during a campaign event in Savannah, Ga., on Thursday. Elijah Nouvelage/Bloomberg/Bloomberg via Getty Images hide caption

The Harris campaign has invested in 24 offices around Georgia, including in more traditionally Republican areas. Since Harris started running for president, White says they’ve brought in 35,000 new volunteers.

As Harris inches ahead, the cavalry comes to Trump's aid on the airwaves

As for time: Trump held a rally in Georgia earlier this month — though he spent part of his speech bashing the state’s Republican governor. (Trump has since made a public show of saying they’ve worked things out.) This week’s bus tour is Harris’ second trip to the state in less than a month.

Polling averages show the race remains close — and it’s much closer with Harris at the top of the ticket than when Biden was the presumptive nominee . Biden won by fewer than 12,000 votes. But the state’s two Democratic U.S. senators are proof that a Democrat can win if they run a near-perfect campaign.

The Trump campaign will also be turning up the heat in the state this week in an effort to win it back. Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene plans to head to a volunteer phone bank in Rome, Ga. In a release she cites “dozens of paid staff, thousands of volunteers, and field offices in every part of the state, from Atlanta to Savannah to the Valdosta. Team Trump will not leave a stone unturned this fall.”

For Trump, Georgia is a must-win state. For Harris, it would open up additional paths to the 270 electoral votes needed to win.

Harris and Walz will take a pitstop in Georgia to do an interview

As Harris and Walz meet voters in person, they are also set to sit down for their first television interview together. CNN’s Dana Bash interviewed them at Kim’s Cafe, a Black-owned restaurant in Savannah, this afternoon. It will air at 9 p.m. EST on CNN.

Harris needs Gen Z. Here's her plan to win them

For the entirety of Harris’ nascent candidacy, she has been in a position to control the message, and she has largely delivered prepared remarks from teleprompter. The interview is, of course, a different format, where she is likely to be pressed on areas where her position has changed since the Democratic primary in 2020, when she supported some version of Medicare for All, opposed fracking and didn’t have as hard of a line on immigration and border security as she does now.

She won’t be alone. Walz will also be part of the interview, which means there likely will be some questions about their relationship and how they would work together — questions that by their nature are not as perilous as trying to explain policy shifts.

The Trump campaign has been publicly badgering Harris to do an interview, in part because they are looking for something to pounce on where they can actually get some traction. They have been trying unsuccessfully for five weeks to end her campaign honeymoon and make some attacks stick, and this interview is the best chance they’ve had in a while.

Already, Trump’s running mate JD Vance is criticizing Harris and Walz for doing a joint appearance rather than having Harris sit for a grilling alone. But it’s not clear how much voters really care about these intricacies.

• election 2024
• Kamala Harris
• 2024 election
• presidential election
• Donald Trump

Harris caps two-day Georgia bus tour with appeal to voters at Savannah rally

SAVANNAH, Ga. — Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday worked to shore up Democratic support in Georgia by visiting a part of the battleground state that politicians don’t frequent nearly as much as the more heavily populated Atlanta area.

“For the past two election cycles, voters in this very state, you who are here, have delivered. You sent two extraordinary senators to Washington, D.C.,” Harris said, referring to Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff.

She said that Georgians mobilized to put a Democrat in the Oval Office four years ago and that she’s hoping for a repeat.

“You showed up, you knocked on doors, you registered folks to vote, and you made it happen,” Harris said. “You did that. And so now we are asking you to do it again.”

Follow live coverage of the 2024 campaign here

Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, completed a two-day bus tour of southeastern Georgia. During a stop at a Savannah café Thursday, Harris said she plans to roll out a tax credit proposal for new startups and small businesses next week.

“This is one of my singular priorities, is to invest and grow our small businesses,” she said.

Shortly before the rally, Walz joined Harris for a joint interview with CNN that’s scheduled to air at 9 p.m. ET Thursday. It’s her first sit-down interview since she launched her White House bid late last month.

The crowd began filing into Savannah’s Enmarket Arena more than three hours before Harris was set to speak, braving a downpour while waiting in long lines to pass through security. Inside the arena, energetic supporters held signs reading “Freedom” and “A New Way Forward,” dancing to songs from CJ the DJ, a local radio host, as blue and white lights beamed across the audience.

A Harris-Walz campaign official said 7,500 people were in attendance. The official said that's the venue's maximum capacity.

Protesters interrupted Harris twice, and the audience cheered as they were led out. One protester was pro-Palestinian; it was unclear what the other protester was saying.

“I am speaking now,” Harris said as the first protester was escorted out, adding that she and President Joe Biden are working “around the clock” to secure a hostage deal.

Walz wasn’t onstage for the Savannah rally. He’s in North Carolina for two campaign events.

Biden’s razor-thin 2020 victory in Georgia came down to fewer than 12,000 votes. One of the heaviest blue regions of the state is metro Atlanta, where Biden performed better than 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in almost every county.

But Democratic leaders in Savannah say the Harris campaign is helping expand party support in the state’s southeast.

“Atlanta has always gotten the juice, has always gotten the love, but us here in southeast Georgia, we really matter,” said Aaron “Adot” Whitely, chair of the Democratic Party in Chatham County, where Savannah is located.

Biden narrowly improved Democrats’ margins in two blue Southeastern counties in 2020, winning Chatham with 58.6% of the vote.

Savannah Mayor Van Johnson, who has long been vocal about the need for Democrats to more seriously engage with cities beyond Atlanta, said he feels the Harris campaign has answered his call by opening seven field offices in southern Georgia.

“The fallacy often is that Georgia is Atlanta and Atlanta is Georgia,” Johnson said. “Each city, each county, has its own distinct flavor and its own distinct history, and so it would be a fool’s errand to think that you can fly in and out of Atlanta and that you’ve covered Georgia.”

Jonae Wartel, senior adviser to the Harris campaign in Georgia, emphasized that Democrats learned the importance of having a statewide strategy from their successful 2021 Senate runoff races, when she was runoff director for Georgia Democrats.

Warnock and Ossoff won their races nearly four years ago, giving Democrats a majority in the Senate. Warnock kept his seat in 2022, beating his Republican opponent.

“I think it’s really important to not see Georgians as a single type of voter, but more a broad coalition,” Wartel said. “So taking her to parts of Georgia that are outside of metro Atlanta is incredibly important.”

The campaign’s volunteer efforts got a boost when Harris announced her campaign, with more than 35,000 people joining volunteer efforts in Georgia, Porsha White, the Harris campaign’s Georgia director, said in a news release.

Amy Morton, CEO of the Democratic consulting firm Southern Majority, said Harris’s rising to the top of the ticket also became a “game changer” for down-ballot races.

Often, Democrats in swing districts try to distance themselves from the presidential nominee, Morton said.

“That is flipped in this situation,” she said. “I already have Republican opponents in these districts who are sprinting away from Trump.”

Megan Lebowitz is a politics reporter for NBC News.

Nnamdi Egwuonwu is a 2024 NBC News campaign embed.

Associated Press Associated Press

News Desk News Desk

Leave your feedback

• Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/watch-live-harris-speaks-at-campaign-rally-in-savannah-on-final-day-of-georgia-bus-tour

WATCH: Harris delivers remarks at campaign rally in Savannah on final day of Georgia bus tour

Vice President Kamala Harris delivered remarks at a campaign rally in Savannah on Thursday, the final day of her campaign’s bus tour through Georgia.

Watch the event in the player above.

Harris’ remarks came ahead of a joint interview with her running mate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz on Thursday night.

The interview with CNN’s Dana Bash will give Harris a chance to quell criticism that she has eschewed uncontrolled environments, while also giving her a fresh platform to define her campaign and test her political mettle ahead of an upcoming debate with former President Donald Trump set for Sept. 10. But it also carries risk as her team tries to build on momentum from the ticket shakeup following Joe Biden’s exit and last week’s Democratic National Convention.

Joint interviews during an election year are a fixture in politics; Biden and Harris, Trump and Mike Pence, Barack Obama and Biden — all did them at a similar point in the race. The difference is those other candidates had all done solo interviews, too. Harris hasn’t yet done an in-depth interview since she became her party’s standard bearer five weeks ago, though she did sit for several while she was still Biden’s running mate.

Harris and Walz are still introducing themselves to voters, unlike Trump and Biden of whom people had near-universal awareness and opinion.

The CNN interview is set to air at 9 p.m. EDT. It is scheduled to be taped at 1:45 p.m. EDT during her two-day bus tour through southeast Georgia that culminates with an evening rally in Savannah. Harris campaign officials believe that in order to win the state over Trump in November, she must make inroads in GOP strongholds across the state.

WATCH: Harris and Walz speak to students in Hinesville during Georgia bus tour stop

Harris, during her time as vice president, has done on-camera and print interviews with The Associated Press and many other outlets, a much more frequent pace than the president — except for Biden’s late-stage media blitz following his disastrous debate performance that touched off the end of his campaign.

Harris’ lack of media access over the past month has become one of Republicans’ key attack lines. The Trump campaign has kept a tally of the days she has gone by as a candidate without giving an interview and have suggested she needs a “babysitter” and that’s why Walz will be there.

“Dana Bash of CNN has a chance at greatness today. If she gave a fair but tough interview of Comrade Kamala Harris, she will expose her as being totally inept and ill suited for the job of President, much as I exposed Crooked Joe Biden during our now famous Debate,” Trump posted online Thursday. “How cool would that be for Dana and CNN???”

Trump has largely steered toward conservative media outlets when granting interviews, though he has held more open press conferences in recent weeks as he sought to reclaim the spotlight that Harris’ elevation had claimed.

After the CNN interview, Walz will peel off and Harris will continue the bus tour alone, heading to a rally before going back to Washington. On Wednesday, they sent time with a high school marching band to the delight of students, and stopped by a Savannah barbecue restaurant.

Harris campaign communications director Michael Tyler said bus tours offer an “opportunity to get to places we don’t usually go (and) make sure we’re competing in all communities.”

The campaign wants the events to motivate voters in GOP-leaning areas who don’t traditionally see the candidates, and hopes that the engagements drive viral moments that cut through crowded media coverage to reach voters across the country.

The stops are meant as moments where voters can learn “not just what they stand for, but who they are as people,” Tyler said.

Support Provided By: Learn more

Educate your inbox

Subscribe to Here’s the Deal, our politics newsletter for analysis you won’t find anywhere else.

Thank you. Please check your inbox to confirm.

VP Kamala Harris, Gov. Tim Walz kick off bus tour in Georgia

Hs marching band meets harris, walz bus tour.

The Liberty County High School marching band got to meet Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Tim Walz on the first stop of the Democratic duo's Georgia bus tour.

SAVANNAH, Ga. - Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz made their first trip to Georgia together on Wednesday.

Walz was there to greet Harris when she landed at the Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport.

The Democratic duo kicked off their two-day bus tour in southern Georgia with plans to meet directly with voters and small business owners.

President Joe Biden beat former President Donald Trump by more than 25-thousand votes in Chatham County in 2020.

Just as in 2020, Democratic strategist Tharon Johnson said the road to victory for the Democrats cuts through the Peach State.

US Vice President and 2024 Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris and her running mate Minnesota Governor Tim Walz greet supporters as they arrive at a campaign rally in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, August 7, 2024. (Photo by KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI/AFP

"Georgia is a top battleground state for the Republicans and the Democrats. It's a key part to the 270 electoral votes for the Harris-Walz campaign," Johnson told FOX 5's Deidra Dukes. "If she wins Georgia, it's game over, because that means she is probably going to win North Carolina. She will definitely win Virginia. She'll hold her own in key battleground states like Michigan and Pennsylvania, and also, she will compete in Nevada."

The Harris-Walz campaign has opened seven field offices in southeast Georgia.

RELATED: Fox News Poll: Harris up by 2 on Trump in Georgia, but within margin of error

Chatham County Commissioner and Democratic Party Chairman Aaron Whitely said the candidates' two-day bus tour is part of the Democrats' efforts to reach voters in rural and suburban areas.

"Chatham County is normally always blue.  It is our neighboring counties where you can see some red," Whitely explained. "Liberty County tends to lean blue, but we are trying to cut down on the margin in those red counties, in our neighboring counties here."

The candidates will also appear at a campaign rally in Savannah on Thursday.

Kamala Harris campaign says she raised $540M

Since President Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race, Vice President Kamala Harris has reportedly raised $540 million, according to her campaign.

Harris planned to campaign in Savannah earlier in August but canceled the event due to the serious rains and flooding caused by Tropical Storm Debby.

While Georgia appeared to be slipping out of the Democrats' reach, the nomination of Harris has led the party to have new hopes of an expanded electoral map - focusing on the Peach State's swing state status.

RELATED: Lil Jon surprises DNC crowd as Georgia casts 123 votes for Kamala Harris during roll call

The Republican candidate for vice president, Sen. JD Vance, appeared at a rally in Valdosta less than a week ago, where he took aim at Harris over the Southern border.

FULL: JD Vance rally in Valdosta, Georgia

Vice president candidate JD Vance holds a rally in Valdosta, Georgia, on Aug. 22, 2024.

Trump's last visit to Atlanta was a rally with JD Vance on Aug. 3.

During the bus tour on Wednesday, Harris and Walz made a special stop at Liberty County High School in Hinesville where they were greeted by the school's band.

Democratic presidential candidate US Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Governor Tim Walz, visit with members of the marching band at Liberty County High School in Hinesville, Georgia, August 28, 2024, as they travel across Georgia for a 2-day campaign bus tour. (Photo by SAUL LOEB / AFP) (Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)

Afterward, they popped into Sandfly Bar-B-Q in Savannah where they met employees and voters.

Democratic presidential candidate US Vice President Kamala Harris greets patrons during a visit at Sandfly Bar-B-Q restaurant in Savannah, Georgia, August 28, 2024, as she and vice presidential nominee Minnesota Governor Tim Walz travel across Georgia for a two-day campaign bus tour. (Photo by SAUL LOEB / AFP) (Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)

At around 7:20 p.m., the bus tour took a sour turn. Savannah Police confirmed one of their motorcycle officers who was part of the motorcade was critically injured in a crash on I-516. FOX 5 Atlanta is working to learn more information about that.