Atlanta Events category interest

ATLANTA, Ga. (Atlanta News First) - With less than 50 days before the Nov. 5, 2024, presidential election, Georgia is the host for the race’s two vice presidential contenders over the next 48 hours.

On Monday, JD Vance, the one-term Ohio U.S. senator who is Donald Trump’s vice presidential running mate, headline the Georgia Faith and Freedom Coalition’s victory dinner at the Cobb Galleria Centre.

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp - with whom Trump has had a high-profile, long-running feud which now appears to be cooling - also headlined the event. Other featured speakers are U.S. Sen. Katie Britt (R-Alabama) and former U.S. congressional representative Tulsi Gabbard, who represented Hawaii for four terms as a Democrat but who left the party after an unsuccessful 2020 White House run.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz is also in Georgia on Monday and Tuesday. Vice President Kamala Harris’ Democratic running mate is expected to arrive in Macon Monday night; on Tuesday, he will speak at a political event in the city before flying to Atlanta for more events.

Walz will then depart for Asheville, North Carolina, where a Harris-Walz campaign rally is scheduled for Tuesday afternoon.

The trip marks Walz’s first solo visit to the state since he was nominated as the party’s vice presidential candidate at the Democratic National Convention. He last visited Georgia in late August, touring the state’s southern cities on a bus tour with Harris.

Georgia is among a handful of battleground states Harris and Trump are desperate to capture as they battle for the commander-in-chief’s seat. A recent Quinnipiac University poll found that Trump has pulled ahead of Harris in Georgia, garnering favor among 49% of those polled compared to Harris’ 45%.

“With 32 electoral votes to offer between them, North Carolina and Georgia loom large among the potential pathways to the presidency and neither state offers a clear-cut favorite,” Quinnipiac University Polling Analyst Tim Malloy said.

In 2020, Joe Biden became the first Democrat since Bill Clinton in 1992 to win Georgia - or any other deep Southern state - in a presidential general election.

Both Trump and Harris have made Georgia a priority. Harris has appeared six times in the Peach State this year, and her last stop was during a July 29, 2024, rally at in Atlanta. That stop was just before she clinched the Democrat nomination for president, which came in the wake of Biden’s stunning decision to end his 2024 reelection bid.

Biden’s uneven, halting performance during Atlanta’s CNN debate with Trump led to a series of cascading events that eventually ended his 2024 reelection bid and led to Harris becoming the Democrat White House nominee.

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