Harris and Walz Point Their Campaign Bus to Rural Georgia

Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, seeking to build Democrats’ momentum in the Sun Belt, will campaign on Wednesday in the rural counties of southeast Georgia before holding a rally on Thursday in Savannah.

Democrats outside the party’s Metro Atlanta engine have long complained that focusing on the capital city, where a majority of Democratic voters in the state live, ignores pockets of supporters in less populous areas. Organizers have emphasized the particular need to engage voters in rural South Georgia and the state’s mountainous northern regions — both heavily conservative parts of the state that will still require high turnout from Black and moderate white voters to keep Democrats competitive.

A visit from the presidential ticket, some rural Democrats say, shows that top party leaders heeded their calls.

“A little does a lot in rural areas,” said Melissa Clink, the former chair of the Democratic Party in Forsyth County, north of the Atlanta suburbs. “If we can get some face time with, especially, the top of the ticket, then not only does that help donors open up their wallets to fund get-out-the-vote operations on the ground but it also inspires more people to do more work because they feel seen.”

The Georgia bus tour is similar to a campaign trip that Ms. Harris and Mr. Walz took to a conservative-leaning county outside Pittsburgh this month. Like South Georgia, Democrats in western Pennsylvania have also said their voters were being unwisely ignored by presidential campaigns. On their tour, Ms. Harris and Mr. Walz made sure to highlight the diversity of the area, engaging with residents in Aliquippa, a former steel town that has a large Black population, where they spent time with a high school football team alongside the former Pittsburgh Steelers star Jerome Bettis. (Mr. Walz is a former high school football coach, which might also play well in Georgia.)

More broadly, Democrats hope Mr. Walz — who flipped a largely rural and more conservative House district in southern Minnesota in 2006 — can help stem their losses with rural and white working-class voters, especially men, who have grown increasingly hostile to their party. He has worked to present a more caring version of masculinity that contrasts with the brash aggressiveness of Mr. Trump.