By Jennifer Gerson, The 19th
The Harris-Walz campaign is turning its attention to Georgia with a bus tour that started Wednesday, August 28th — but they stay[ed] away from the Democratic stronghold that is metro Atlanta and instead headed to south Georgia.
It’s part of a bet that voters there — a Whiter, more rural, more conservative area — may be open to what the Harris campaign has embraced as its core value: freedom. Since the beginning of her 38-day-old campaign, Vice President Kamala Harris has made freedom a central theme — it’s the Beyoncé song that she walks out to at rallies and the word that linked discussion of voting rights, abortion and gun safety at last week’s Democratic National Convention (DNC). “Freedom” was in the title of the Harris campaign’s very first TV ad, released July 25, in which she talks about rejecting chaos and hate for the freedom to get ahead, to be safe and to make decisions about your body.
The Harris campaign has not been shy about its patriotism, putting strong messages about the promise and potential of America, rooted in love of country, in the foreground of its convention programming and media ads. Veteran grassroots organizers and coalition leaders say it’s a strategy tailor-made to bring moderate and conservative White women into the Democratic tent — by accurately reflecting their concerns, key issues and values. Attracting some of those women is key to winning Georgia, veteran progressive organizers say — and many of these conservative women are in south Georgia. Even if the Harris campaign doesn’t win many of the counties outside metro Atlanta, losing by a smaller margin could be enough to give them the boost they need to take the state.
Porsha White, the Harris campaign’s state director in Georgia, said in a memo Wednesday that the campaign has more than 190 staff in 24 offices, calling it “the largest in-state operation of any Democratic presidential campaign cycle.” The memo pointed out that the offices are spread from rural Washington and Jenkins counties to outer suburban Atlanta, including Forsyth County, a longtime Republican stronghold where former President Donald Trump won nearly 66 percent of votes in 2020.
This week, the Harris campaign has also begun a blitz of Facebook and Instagram ads targeting Georgia voters, predominantly women. Their message focuses on contrasting Harris and Trump on reproductive freedoms and preserving democracy.
Taylor Salditch, the executive director of Supermajority, a progressive grassroots organization that focuses on mobilizing young women voters, said that because freedom is a value to the majority of Americans, it can attract moderate White women.
“The idea is that when you organize around a set of values, you are able to move away from the politicized language that we’ve become so entrenched in — and can win elections on a host of issues that you might not have thought we could have won on before,” Salditch said.
White women are the single largest voting bloc in the United States, and reaching White women outside of major metro areas is critical for winning elections, said Jackie Payne, the founder and executive director of Galvanize Action, a grassroots group that focuses on persuading more White voters to vote for progress on reproductive rights and preserving democracy. It’s why the Harris-Walz campaign’s choice to focus time, money and energy in south Georgia makes sense, Payne said — especially when they are leaning so heavily on messaging that couples patriotism with reproductive rights.
Payne cited a recent Galvanize survey that shows that 69 percent of moderate White women believe that abortion should be legal and 47 percent say they won’t vote for any candidate who doesn’t support reproductive freedom.
“Between 47 and 69 there’s a lot of opportunities in saying, ‘You believe in this thing — why is it not decisive in your vote?’ I think that’s where the opportunity is with them,” Payne said.
Payne also said that Galvanize’s research has shown that “preserving democracy” has become the No. 2 voting issue among moderate White women. It means that those voters could be open to the Harris campaign’s intense focus on patriotism and freedom.
“We saw that moderate White women believe that Republicans are more of a threat to democracy than Democrats and that they’re the most likely of any group — liberals, conservatives, moderates — to say that they believe the current system is the best system to protect our freedoms and our rights,” Payne said. “They’re invested in protecting that.”
The focus of the Harris campaign on freedom — long a Republican buzzword — shows a concerted effort by the campaign to “tap into a moment where for moderate White women, what we see if that patriotism is a very big value of theirs,” Payne said. “They’re very committed to this country. They’re very patriotic. It’s an important part of who they are. And so a freedom frame works very well with them. What they’re experiencing since Dobbs is a visceral experience of freedom being taken away.”
In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that ended a federal right to abortion, Georgia instituted a ban on abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, before many people know they’re pregnant. That ban has crystallized the impact of the Trump-appointed court’s decision in Georgia; a poll done by Reproductive Freedom for All one year after the Dobbs decision found that 72 percent of all Georgia voters say they find the six-week ban “somewhat or very concerning.” Another factor in Georgia: Trump keeps attacking popular Republican Gov. Brian Kemp. Though the two have reportedly reached a tentative peace, many conservative voters in the state are likely to not forget or forgive the extensive personal attacks.
Olivia Troye, a former Trump national security official who resigned from his administration in August 2020 and spoke last week at the DNC, said that for her and other Republican women, the Harris campaign offers a patriotic alternative to Trump, whose message is about how America is “just this awful place.”
She thinks Harris can win over Republican women with a message around patriotism and reproductive freedom. “A lot of conservative women are not OK with the extremism that they’re seeing in this country. They may be pro-life, but they’re not pro putting targets on women, targets on doctors. They feel like [abortion] is a very personal decision between their faith, their doctor and their family.”
She says that the campaign’s choice to go to south Georgia speaks to an understanding of this feeling among conservative women. “They understand that they need to engage voters directly and they are working hard for that vote. Donald Trump is sitting there at a golf course doing a press conference, and the Harris-Walz campaign is doing a bus tour in south Georgia. They are going out into communities. They’re working for this.”
Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner is the executive director and CEO of MomsRising, a grassroots organization that focuses on mobilizing mothers as a voting bloc. She said moms nationwide are concerned about freedom — particularly the freedom to care for and support their families. Polling from 2023 found that 76 percent of Republicans favor paid family, parental and medical leave; 45 percent of Independent women said they would be more likely to vote for a candidate who supports paid family leave. Talking about these issues within the context of freedom only helps make this all the more clear — and shows that the Harris-Walz campaign is also acutely aware of how the Trump campaign is trying to reach these very same women.
“A major part of the Republican strategy from day one of losing the White House has been to put mom voters against mom voters, to try to divide and wedge out mom voters, using fear and hate as a spark. That’s why we’re seeing so much messaging about book bans, censorship, and other really divisive issues coming from the Republican Party,” Rowe-Finkbeiner said. Conservative groups like Moms for Liberty are framing pushes to remove books on gender and sexuality or race as giving parents the freedom to shield their kids from topics they find inappropriate. But not all moms see it like that, she said, and the Harris-Walz campaign’s messaging around patriotism and freedom is now offering moderate White women a clear alternative.
“People want freedom, and the freedom they want is the freedom to be able to successfully raise kids and go to work, to successfully decide when and if they’re having children, to successfully be able to make decisions about their own bodies, the freedom to be able to have your kids get a great and accurate education,” Rowe-Finkbeiner said. “That’s the kind of freedom moms want.”
Angela Ferrell-Zabala, the executive director of Moms Demand Action, says the messaging around freedom is crucial to build a winning coalition — and that she has seen how this happened within the gun safety movement and its ability to translate engagement into votes.
“The Harris-Walz campaign is saying that freedom is for every American, even if you don’t vote for us. It means being able to show up in your day to day life and not worry about the threat of gun violence. It means being able to send your children to school without fear of being shot and killed. It means being able to send your children to the corner store without fear of being shot and killed. That’s what freedom means,” she said.
Having spent a significant amount of time over the last year getting to know and connect with survivors of the Covenant School shooting in Nashville — a group that’s mostly White, conservative women — Ferrell-Zabala said she’s seen up close what happens when organizing can shift away from issues and toward common values.
“We put these cookie cutter labels on people and assume, ‘Republicans think this’ and ‘Democrats think this,’ but these conservative women that I’m talking to don’t feel represented by this extreme Republican Party, by the extremists in their party. This doesn’t represent what moderate and conservative women feel — and they are sick and tired of all of the rhetoric and division. They just want to allow all children to thrive and live together in community.”
