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Vice President Kamala Harris takes the stage at Enmarket Arena in Savannah.
Credit: Benjamin Payne / GPB News
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Harris campaigns in Savannah at first rally since Democratic National Convention
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LISTEN: Vice President Kamala Harris focused her stump speech on her economic proposals, while also criticizing the Project 2025 conservative policy agenda. GPB's Benjamin Payne reports.
About 7,500 people filled Savannah's Enmarket Arena to capacity on Thursday to watch Vice President Kamala Harris hold her first campaign rally since formally accepting her party's nomination at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago last week.
The visit signaled Democrats' renewed interest in Georgia, where recent polls show that Harris has closed the gap against former President Donald Trump, putting the battleground state back in play after President Joe Biden's departure from the race in July.
“This is going to be a tight race until the very end, okay?” Harris told rally attendees. “So, let's not pay too much attention to the polls because we are running as the underdog. We have some hard work ahead of us, but we like hard work. Hard work is good work. And with your help, we are going to win this November.”
Maximizing voter turnout in Savannah's Chatham County — the largest in Georgia outside of metro Atlanta — may be critical to Harris's odds against Trump. In 2020, Biden defeated Trump by 18 percentage points in Chatham County, which amounted to 25,015 more votes, in a Georgia election that was decided by only 11,779 votes.
Her rally marked the first time that a general election presidential candidate had campaigned in Savannah since Bill Clinton in 1992.
Harris's 20-minute stump speech delved into her economic agenda more than anything else, as she sought to turn the very topic that was among Biden's greatest liabilities into a source of strength for her own campaign.
“I will take on the high cost of housing and work with developers to cut the red tape and build millions of new homes, and I will give 100 million Americans a tax cut, including $6,000 to families during the first year of their child's life,” Harris said. “Unlike Donald Trump, I will always put the middle class and working class families first. Always. I come from the middle class. I know what I'm talking about.”
She also sought to tie Trump to Project 2025, a conservative policy blueprint written by the Heritage Foundation and several former Trump administration officials. In particular, Harris lambasted the plan's calls to further limit abortion rights, including through mandatory state reporting of abortions and miscarriages to the federal government.
“Simply put, they are out of their minds,” she said. “Why don't they trust women? Well, we trust women. And when Congress passes a bill to restore reproductive freedom, as President of the United States, I will proudly sign it into law.”
Harris sought to tie Trump to Georgia's six-week abortion ban, which went into effect shortly after the Supreme Court in 2022 ended the constitutional right to abortion.
“Understand how we got here,” she said. “When he was president, Donald Trump hand-picked three members of the United States Supreme Court with the intention that they would undo the protections of Roe v. Wade. And they did just as he intended.”
Among the introductory speakers at the rally was Savannah Mayor Van Johnson, a Democrat who won reelection in a landslide victory last November and who is seen by some as a rising star in the Democratic Party.
“I want a president that doesn't embarrass the hell out of me,” Johnson said. “I want a president that respects women. I want a president that's respected around the world. I want a president that believes that everyone matters, no matter who they are, no matter where they live, no matter who they love, no matter what their tax bracket is.”
Connie Williams and her friend Elyse Sherman made the hour-and-a-half drive from Vidalia to attend the rally.
“I loved it. It was crunk,” Williams said. “She has brought joy back to us. No negativity. Just joy. Fun. And we have something to look forward to now. Somebody that is going to take us forward.”
“I don't want a president that's a felon,” Sherman said.
Earlier in the day, Harris and running mate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz visited multiple restaurants in downtown Savannah, including Kim's Cafe, where the two sat for their first interview since Harris officially became the Democratic nominee.
Walz left Savannah before the rally for an event in Raleigh, North Carolina.
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