Kamala Harris is making a play for Georgia, but can she make it?

ATLANTA — Although Vice President Kamala Harris rallied thousands of her supporters this week, telling them that with their help she would win Georgia and the White House, her fate could very well be in the hands of people like David Hale, a Republican who wasn’t even in the audience.

Instead, the 25-year-old supervisor for a background check company was 15 miles away in his apartment, preparing dinner after a day of work.

Even so, it is unlikely that Harris will find a more committed vote, even though she disagrees with most of her political positions. “His opponent is an existential threat to the American republic,” he said of the Republican candidate who attempted the coup, donald trump. “Once we defeat this threat, we can return to regular political debate. But now is not the time.”

President Joe Biden narrowly won Georgia in 2020 thanks to voters like Hale — who said he voted for Biden but for Republicans on the rest of the ticket — as well as about 27,000 Republicans who left the president’s line blank and similarly voted Republican .

The question for Democrats is whether Harris, a California progressive of Indian and Jamaican descent, can repeat the feat of Biden, an older white moderate from Delaware.

Georgia Republicans, even those who say they only reluctantly support Trump, said they already know the answer.

“She’s not going to beat Georgia. But she is clearly in a honeymoon period,” said Martha Zoller, a Republican Party consultant and radio show host.

Polls taken in the days following Biden’s decision to abandon his re-election bid and instead back Harris showed Trump maintaining a small lead over Harris, while those taken more recently show an even race.

Attendees at Harris’ Tuesday rally at the Georgia State Convocation Center, just south of downtown Atlanta, said the energy displayed at Obama’s level in 2008 shows that Georgia Democrats are now motivated and energized, and that there is still plenty of time to do the groundwork, I needed to vote for her.

“I’ve been with Kamala since 2019,” said Patricia Fulton, 54, who showed up to the arena wearing handmade Kamala Harris earrings and a Kamala Harris T-shirt from her unsuccessful presidential campaign in the 2020 Democratic primary.

She said she and her friends supported Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton eight years ago. “We lost in 2016 and have been waiting ever since,” she said.

Prominent conservative Erick Erickson, who hosts a radio show in Macon, Georgia, said the growing enthusiasm for Harris will certainly make the race closer than it would have been if Biden had remained the nominee. But in the end, high gas and food prices will overcome the exhaustion with Trump that led to his defeat four years ago, he said.

In 2020, Biden won Georgia by 11,779 votes – a margin well less than a single percentage point – because many Republicans, predominantly in the wealthy suburbs of Atlanta, chose to skip the presidential race in their ballots.

“It’s not that Joe Biden won Georgia; is that Donald Trump lost Georgia,” Erickson said, adding that Trump’s ban from Twitter and Facebook following his attempt to ironically reverse his 2020 election defeat was instrumental in rehabilitating his image. “People don’t see the tirades. I think that helped him.”

In 2018, state lawmaker Stacey Abrams ran a gubernatorial race focused on increasing voter turnout among Black Georgians and progressive Democrats, but still lost to then-Secretary of State Brian Kemp by 54,723 votes. Two years later, Biden ran a more centrist campaign, promising a return to normality after Trump’s chaos, and won.

Geoff Duncan, the former Republican lieutenant governor who broke with his party after the Trump-incited attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, said Biden’s 2020 candidacy was a better model for Harris’ campaign now. “His willingness to continue talking about immigration and inflation with a realistic tone will pay dividends in November,” he said.

Duncan previously supported Biden and has now supported Harris, including attending her rally on Tuesday. “It was a solid step in the right direction to win the hearts and minds of the middle 10% who will decide this election,” he said.

Duncan and Hale supported Nikki Haley in the Georgia presidential primary in March, even though she had already dropped out. They were not alone. In that election, 77,902 voters (13% of those who voted) chose Haley over Trump, who had already effectively secured the nomination.

How many of those who refuse to “come home” to Trump in November will be able to determine who wins the state’s 16 electoral votes, which in 2020 went to the Democratic candidate for the first time in a generation.

Even his supporters admit that Trump’s failure to bring them back into the fold could cost him dearly. “I don’t know how many Haley voters he gets,” Erickson said.

Harris’ campaign said it is aware of this pool of votes and, in addition to trying to maximize Democratic turnout, is also working to win over Republicans dissatisfied with Trump.

“As the MAGA movement continues to alienate voters who care about the future of our democracy, standing strong with our allies against foreign adversaries and working in every way to get things done for the American people, the Harris campaign will continue to work work hard to earn their support,” Austin Weatherford, the campaign’s Republican engagement director, said in a statement.

Regardless of his actual chances of success, it is clear that Harris is, at least for now, making a serious play for the state.

Political veterans often point out that the most valuable asset of a national campaign is the candidate’s time, especially in the final stretch. And under that rubric, Harris is investing heavily. Two of the campaign’s first eight rallies will take place in Georgia: Atlanta on Tuesday and Savannah on Aug. 9, in a series of events timed to showcase Harris’ running mate.

Hale, for his part, said he wouldn’t mind seeing Harris in person at some point, but that it wouldn’t make him a liberal Democrat — or prevent him from voting against Trump, as he did four years ago.

“I didn’t vote for him at the time because he made it clear that he wouldn’t accept the results if he didn’t win, which we saw on January 6th. That pretty much sealed it for me,” Hale said. “I will vote Republican and Kamala Harris for president.”

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