Kamala Harris' new challenge: translating momentum into votes
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Photo illustration: Brendan Lynch/Axios. Photo: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg via Getty Images
As Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign comes off a massive first week, it now has to show it can make the momentum last.
Why it matters: With 98 days until the election, the Harris presidential campaign is now keenly focused on translating the initial bump — and the volunteers and funding that came with it — into a winning get-out-the-vote campaign.
Zoom in: The Harris campaign signed up 360,000 new volunteers and raised over $200 million in less than a week, battleground states director Dan Kanninen told reporters on Monday.
- The DNC says it broke its record for an online fundraising day, raising $6.5 million in grassroots donations on July 21.
- It raised $1 million in the 5pm hour alone.
- This weekend, the campaign deployed 29,000 volunteers who knocked on over 126,000 doors and made 768,635 phone calls.
Between the lines: Harris has the opportunity to harness a series of key moments over the next month.
- In the next 6-10 days: Harris will pick a vice presidential nominee.
- In two weeks: Democrats will convene in Chicago for the Democratic National Convention.
- In a month, the first mail-in ballots will be mailed out.
The details: A very large number of the new volunteers come from battleground states and are plugged into the campaign's battleground operations, Kanninen told Axios.
- The volunteers not from battleground states get funneled into distributed organizing teams and make phone calls into the battleground states while engaging in everything from grassroots fundraising to online digital advocacy.
- DNC chair Jaime Harrison said in a memo that Democrats' ground game "has been supercharged by ... an undeniable surge in grassroots energy, powered by....grassroots volunteers, donors, meme-makers, allies, and organizers."
The big picture: Democrats have not seen so much enthusiasm to mobilize *for* a candidate in years.
- In 2020, Democratic voters were driven largely by the incentive to vote Trump out.
- Kanninen also reminded that Harris and her campaign are "the underdogs in this race, in an attempt to temper expectations.
The other side: The Trump campaign plans to go after Harris on her liberal policies, a Trump campaign official told Axios.
- Those include her support of the Green New Deal and other environmental policies, her record on border security and immigration, her ties to Bidenomics and her record and comments on crime and defunding the police, the official said.
- The RNC plans to have 100,000 volunteers involved in its election integrity efforts, with 5,000 in each battleground state, RNC Chair Michael Whatley told Axios during the RNC Convention in Milwaukee.
- The RNC has not shared how many field organizers it has recruited, but told the Wall Street Journal that "thousands of Trump Force 47 "captains" have been trained."
What's next: Today, the Trump campaign goes up with their first TV ad buy in swing states including Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
