CHICAGO — Attendees at the 2024 Democratic National Convention are predicting that Vice President Kamala Harris can turn the South’s electoral map on its head, but not all Democrats agree.
Georgia and North Carolina, two traditionally Republican states, are all but guaranteed to be close battlegrounds this cycle, and the jury is still out on whether Harris, buoyed by renewed enthusiasm from black voters and the abortion debate, can complete Democrats’ dream of establishing a “blue wall” in the fastest growing region of the country.
Some Democrats in Chicago this week, including Rep. Sanford Bishop (D-GA), told the Washington Examiner that Florida, Tennessee, and even Texas will be within Harris‘s reach come November.
Bishop said in an interview that he has not seen enthusiasm for a Democratic candidate in the South this high “since Obama.”
“There were African American men who were, for some strange reason, leaning toward Trump, who are now saying, ‘Well, maybe I’ll take another look,’ because she has demonstrated the energy, the dynamism, that I guess they were not feeling with President Biden,” Bishop said Monday. “She just brings that excitement and that energy and that community that, you know, that the country needs.”
Bishop, whose district includes Columbus, Georgia’s second-largest city, plus significant swathes of farmland, approved of Harris’s decision to tap Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) to be her running mate based on his connections to both urban and rural areas.
Beryl Ross, a 61-year-old Chicago native, said he believes that Harris’s background — she is the first black woman to be nominated for a major party ticket — and “just her black presence” will help Southern voters “get on board.”
“The black HBCU colleges down there, like Clark Atlanta, Spelman, Morehouse, which I know people who have attended those universities, are also getting out there and promoting voters for Kamala,” he said in an interview. Harris attended Howard University, a historically black college.
Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC), on the other hand, told the Washington Examiner to pump the brakes on speculation that Harris can flip big chunks of the South but did say she is “laying the foundation” for a future shift.
President Joe Biden came within 1 point of defeating former President Donald Trump in North Carolina in 2020 and won Georgia narrowly the same year.
“Well, I don’t know about a wave, but maybe a ripple,” he said following his speech at the DNC. “We have to see what happens on the 5th of November, but there’s no question in my mind. We saw the way the numbers flipped in North Carolina. You see where the gap has closed to 2 points in Georgia, and I even saw a poll that said it’s like 3 or 4 points in Florida, of all places. And I have three daughters who are telling me, ‘Daddy, y’all need to look at South Carolina. There’s something happening in South Carolina.’
“So, something has happened,” he added. “It may not all take place by November.”
Bakari Sellers, a political strategist and co-chairman of Harris’s 2020 White House campaign, told the Washington Examiner that while Georgia and North Carolina are key parts of the electoral picture for both parties, simply forcing Republicans to spend time and money defending Florida and Texas, which need “a couple more years of organizing,” would be a win for Democrats.
Florida is among the states that have gone from a perennial battleground to a Republican stronghold in recent election cycles, while Texas has begun to trend lighter shades of red.
“It always seems, you know, a few hundred thousand votes outside of our grasp, when we see, you know, hundreds of thousands of people sitting at home,” Sellers said in an interview. “I believe one of the things she has to do over these next 80 days is continue to meet voters where they are, something that the vice president has done extremely well. It’s a game of turnout, and my analysis of the race hasn’t changed much since her entry versus Joe Biden. I’ve always told people this is a three-person race. It just happens to be this case. It’s Kamala Harris versus Donald Trump versus the couch. How many voters stay home is the question.”
Justin Pearson, a Tennessee state representative who rose to national fame after being expelled from and later reinstated to the state legislature in 2023 over anti-gun violence protests, claimed that “the nation will go only as far as the South will let it.”
“Justice is going to happen in the South,” Pearson told the Washington Examiner following Wednesday’s delegate breakfasts. “The litmus test for American democracy is in the South. We have to give everything that we can to build a new South that listens to the people. We have to organize the South. We have to mobilize the South, and we have to activate the South. And we’re going to win this election with the South and with young folks, too.”
Republicans generally scoff at the idea that Harris could win states in the South beyond Georgia or North Carolina.
Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL), who took part in the Trump campaign’s DNC counterprogramming on Tuesday, outright rejected the idea that abortion puts a growing number of Southern states in play for Harris.
“My reaction is that’s silliness,” Donalds told the Washington Examiner. “They can say whatever they want, but I think the polling has been pretty consistent in every state that you’re talking about. When it comes to Texas, Texas is going to be just fine. When it comes to Florida, I mean, come on. Seriously? Florida is going to be just fine. It’s going to come home for President Trump.”
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Donalds, who is thought to be eyeing a 2026 run for governor in Florida, did concede that winning North Carolina, a hotly contested battleground, would be difficult but stated that Republicans “are committed to doing that work.”
Trump and his running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), held a rally in the state on Wednesday that focused heavily on foreign policy.