CHICAGO — Georgia Democrats are tired of hearing about alternate paths to the White House that don’t include them.
“Georgia has always been counted out,” Rep. Nikema Williams, chair of the Democratic Party of Georgia, told NOTUS. “I don’t know if it’s because it is the deep, deep South, but what I do know is the same people who are saying that counted us out in 2020, and then they counted us out in the runoffs in 2021 and they counted us out again in 2022.”
What many Democratic officials and operatives speculated late last year under President Joe Biden’s candidacy is bearing out with the Kamala Harris and Tim Walz campaign, too: North Carolina is looking more competitive for Democrats than Georgia is.
Democrats in Georgia, which has the same number of electoral college votes as North Carolina, don’t totally believe the numbers.
“I don’t know why anyone would think that Georgia has gotten any redder than it was in 2020 when, in fact, we’ve had an influx of young and progressive people of color who are newly registered,” Rep. Hank Johnson told NOTUS on the Democratic convention floor. “There are always naysayers when it comes to Georgia.”
Still, before ending his presidential campaign, Biden trailed significantly in Georgia polling. Momentum from Harris’ ascension to the party’s leader has since helped to tighten the gap, but most surveys still show Donald Trump with a lead. North Carolina is a different story: Harris is either leading Trump or in a statistical tie with him.
“I feel comfortable in my mind that not only are we at play, I think [Harris] is in great shape to win the state,” Rep. Robert Reives, the North Carolina House Democratic leader, told NOTUS. “We’ve always been a better bet because we are a much more purple state. We haven’t seen the successes in Georgia that you need for sustained excellence, and North Carolina has made incremental gains.”
Georgia Democrats acknowledge that this election greatly differs from 2020 where a host of factors, including Sen. Raphael Warnock’s presence on the ballot, helped secure a win for the party there.
But between state demographics and Trump’s handling of the 2020 election, which led to a Georgia grand jury accusing him and others of trying to overturn the results, they’re still holding on to hope.
“Even Georgia Republicans know that Donald Trump is not a patriot, because 50,000 people in Georgia went out and voted for Brian Kemp and Raphael Warnock at the same time and since then, 200,000 more young people have registered to vote in the state of Georgia,” said Parker Short, president of Young Democrats for Georgia. “There’s so much potential.”
Meanwhile, the Harris campaign is running a full throttle effort in North Carolina, a state Democrats have not won since 2008, but where Biden lost by less than 2% of the vote.
Harris has visited North Carolina 17 times as vice president, nine of which happened this year. In her latest, a rally in Raleigh, she laid out key parts of her economic platform just ahead of the Democratic National Convention. The party is counting on Republicans’ moves to effectively limit abortion access, and the controversial GOP nominee for governor, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, to boost Democratic turnout.
The path is also through down -ballot races, Reives said. It is local officials “with the best combination of visibility and access to voters” who will be the main vehicles for maintaining ground-level support.
Democrats’ early investment in North Carolina (including ad placements and more than 20 field offices in different counties, several of which are Republican strongholds) has not gone unnoticed by Trump and Robinson.
Trump placed his own ads in North Carolina for the first time this month, looking to highlight Harris’ role in the country’s southern border crisis. In a fundraising message sent out to voters on Tuesday, Robinson predicted, “if nothing changes on the fundraising front, not only do we risk losing this race, but the White House too.”
“Never would I have imagined having to send this, but the Democrats just have endless amounts of money and manpower,” Robinson wrote.
North Carolina Democrats notice the change.
“We haven’t really gotten back to those grassroots since Obama was running for president, and now we are able to do it,” Rep. Deborah Ross told NOTUS. “I don’t fault Joe Biden for running during a pandemic, but right now it is all about the people, and I believe Harris can do it.”
“Everywhere I go, all the people who did that work for Obama back then, they’re back in it. And everywhere I go, we ask, is there somebody new here? And there is always a hand up,” Ross added.
Even former Rep. GK Butterfield, who told NOTUS in February that he had “no confidence that [Democrats] could appeal to Republican voters” in the sole toss-up congressional race in the state, says he’s changed his mind about freshman Rep. Don Davis’ race.
“Davis has created a coalition that is quite impressive of Democrats, unaffiliated voters, the business community, military community and veteran community,” Butterfield said. “And Mark Robinson has been a gift to him and the Democrats. The stain that Mark Robinson is placing on North Carolina is now growing to the benefit of not just Kamala Harris, but also to the benefit of Don Davis.”
Butterfield, like most Democrats, hopes the party can take both North Carolina and Georgia without having to split resources or sacrifice infrastructure. Georgia Democrats certainly agree.
On the convention floor Tuesday night as Lil’ Jon introduced the Georgia delegation for roll call with a crowd-amping performance, Williams was reminded of the Democratic Party’s legacy in the state and the intense effort going into turning Georgia blue again.
“Clearly it’s not just us. Georgia is on everybody’s mind tonight the way my phone has been blowing up seriously,” Williams told NOTUS after the roll call. “We are a true battleground state. I don’t expect to see a poll with one candidate leading with big numbers, because that’s what a battleground state is. You fight for every vote.”
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Calen Razor is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.