After a remarkable first week as a presidential candidate in which she pulled even with Donald Trump in polls and injected new enthusiasm into the Democratic Party, Kamala Harris is sprinting to convert the summer-time flush of excitement into votes in November.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]The Harris for President campaign is moving quickly to add to the paid staff installed by the Biden campaign across the country, including hiring 150 staffers during the first two weeks of August to deploy in the so-called Blue Wall states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. That would bring Harris’ total campaign staff in those states to 750 people, up from 600. In Arizona and North Carolina, Harris plans to double the size of her campaign staff, a sign that her strategists believe those states are back in play after some in the party had suggested they had become unwinnable when President Joe Biden was still at the top of the ticket.
“This election is going to be incredibly close, so this campaign is getting to work and taking nothing for granted,” Harris for President communications director Michael Tyler told reporters during a conference call on Monday afternoon.
Campaign data shows a lot of Democratic voters who had been holding back for Biden immediately got off the sideline last week to back Harris. Of the $200 million Harris has raised since Biden dropped out of the race on July 21, two-thirds came from people who hadn’t donated so far this cycle, her campaign said Monday. And her campaign signed up a striking 360,000 new volunteers in its first week.
Harris Campaign officials believe that the extensive network they had already built for Biden is kicking into high gear for the Vice President. Over the weekend, volunteers knocked on 126,000 doors and made 768,635 phone calls, a Harris campaign official said, far more than campaign leaders had anticipated at this stage in the campaign.
Harris will hold a campaign rally at Georgia State University in Atlanta on Tuesday evening and meet with local advocates for reproductive rights, an issue her campaign believes will be decisive for voters in close states.
Almost immediately, Harris’ campaign has captured the momentum in the race, while gaining traction with framing Trump as “weird” and his running mate J.D. Vance as a callous critic of “childless cat ladies.” Speaking at a rally in St. Cloud, Minn. on Saturday, Trump tried to kick back at Harris calling her “a radical left lunatic” and mocking the way she laughs. But so far, the critiques of Harris from the right haven’t dampened the energy behind her run.
It’s an unusual position for Trump, who has built his political career by dominating the news cycle with unexpected and outlandish comments, and as recently as mid-July seemed ascendant in the race following the assassination attempt against him in Butler, Pa.
Dan Kanninen, the battleground state director for Harris, said the campaign “will not get comfortable.”
In addition to campaigning in Georgia, Harris will travel to Houston on Thursday to attend Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee’s funeral service. Also this week, Harris’s staff is working to vet vice presidential candidates with an eye to her being able to pick a running mate by next week.
