U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris urges Democrats to keep fighting for votes during visit to Duluth
Staff Photo: Curt Yeomans
By Curt Yeomans
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U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris came to Gwinnett County on Sunday with a message for Georgians: make sure every person who can vote in Tuesday’s election does vote.
Harris, the Democratic Party’s nominee for vice president, highlighted a “drive in” rally for Democrats in the parking lot of the Infinite Energy Center in Duluth on Sunday afternoon, hours before President Donald Trump was set to appear at a rally of his own in Rome. Hundreds of cars filled the parking lot, although several face mask-covered attendees got out of their vehicles and lined a barrier to see her speak.
The message to Democrat at the outset of Harris’ speech, as well as during remarks made by other speakers, was simple: Don’t relax yet.
“Look at where we are Georgia,” Harris said. “Look at where we are and what you have been doing, organizing and mobilizing and getting folks registered to vote. You know, early voting is over but we want to remind everybody they can drop off their ballots in the drop boxes, so we want to make sure that they’re doing that (by) 7 p.m. on election day.”
Harris and Joe Biden, the Democratic Party’s nominee for president, have made multiple trips to Georgia in recent weeks — as has Trump and Vice President Mike Pence — in a show of just how in play Georgia is in Tuesday’s presidential election. Polls are predicting a close race in a state where, two years ago, former Georgia House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams came very close to being the first Democrat elected governor since 1998.
Harris told the crowd that she expects Georgia to play a key role in deciding the presidential election.
“You all are going to decide who is going to be the next president of the United States,” she said. “You are. You’re going to decide who is going to be the next president of the United States, and so I am back in Georgia to thank you for all you’ve been doing these years and these months and these weeks and these days. Look at what kind of turnout we’ve already seen in terms of early voting and I just wanted to come back to remind us that we still have a ways to go.
“You know that last leg of a long trip is usually the longest and the most important. This is not the time to let up. This is the time to put our feet on that pedal and go, and get this thing done and make sure everyone votes.”
Before Harris took the stage, Abrams as well as U.S. Reps. Hank Johnson and Lucy McBath, both D-Ga., and U.S. Senate candidate Jon Ossoff addressed the crowd.
Meadowcreek High School graduate Leslie Palomino then introduced the vice presidential nominee to the crowd.
Harris highlighted the stakes in the election, pointing to several “crises” facing the nation at this time, such as public health and economic ramifications of the COVID-19 pandemic, mental health, food insecurity, inability to cover rent costs.
“Georgia, there’s a real clear difference,” Harris said.
But, time and again, Harris came back to the topic of voting and challenges to voting, whether it be limiting the number of absentee drop off boxes in Texas or cutting funding to the U.S. Postal Service. She highlighted Abrams, the Democratic Party’s nominee for governor in 2018, for her work on voting rights in Georgia and across the nation.
“All that we are looking to now in terms of Georgia and the prospect of what we might accomplish in this state, in large part we have to say ‘Thank you Stacey Abrams for the work that you have done,’ ” Harris said.
Gwinnett County’s shift in politics in recent years, from a solidly Republican stronghold to a play where Democrats have been gaining more and more power in recent election cycles, was not overlooked at the event.
“We are living in a battleground state, and we are in the heart of that battleground in Gwinnett County,” Abrams said in a fiery speech. “We know that a few years ago, when we said that Georgia was on the move, it was hard to get people to believe us.
“We knew what we could see. We knew that diversity wasn’t destiny, it was opportunity, and so we started investing and we started running and we started winning, and now we are on the cusp of delivering 16 electoral college votes for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.”
Abrams praised Gwinnett Democrats for their work in the county in recent years to turn the county blue. that included the county narrowly backing Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, and flipping several local offices and state legislative seats in 2018.
“We knew that diversity was a strength, not a weakness,” she said. “We understand that, in Gwinnett County in 2016, if we talked to Latin Americans, if we talked to Asian Americans, if we talked to Black Americans, if we united with White Americans, we could deliver the city and the county and we could turn Gwinnett blue.
“And what did we do in ’16? We delivered Gwinnett County. But, see, then Gwinnett decided to show off and in 2018, you not only sent more blue votes, you sent folks to the state House and now we’re 16 votes away from victory in the state House.”
Meanwhile, Harris urged Democrats to turn out in droves and support Democrats in Georgia’s congressional races. She said McBath needs to be elected, saying her election to Congress in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District in 2016 “made a statement” about where Georgia and the south is at politically.
But, Harris also called on Democrats to build off McBath’s victory from two years ago and flip the 7th Congressional District. Democrat Carolyn Bourdeaux narrowly lost to U.S. Rep. Rob Woodall, R-Ga., in the 2018 race for the seat and now she faces Republican Rich McCormick for what is an open seat.
“Carolyn (Bourdeaux), where are you? There you are,” Harris said. “We’ve got to send you to the United States Congress, right Georgia?”
