Vice President Kamala Harris is coming to Charlotte today to open the Biden campaign’s first campaign field office in the city, which will be in uptown. ]
It’s part of a big push by Democrats to win North Carolina — the state which was former President Trump’s narrowest victory in 2020.
Only seven states are expected to be competitive in the November election. One is North Carolina. Trump won it by only 1.3 percentage points, or about 75,000 votes in 2020.
The Biden campaign’s decision to dispatch vice president Harris to Charlotte is part of an overall strategy — to energize the state’s second-largest county, which is home to the most registered Democrats.
David Barrios is the state director for the Biden campaign.
"We are taking Charlotte and Mecklenburg County as a whole, Black voters as a whole seriously," Barrios said.
Over the last twenty years, Mecklenburg County has become increasingly blue, with Democrats holding almost all local offices. But in recent elections, the county has meant missed opportunities rather than triumphs for Democrats — as turnout has lagged other urban counties in North Carolina.
In the 2022 midterms, Mecklenburg turnout was among the lowest in the state. Wake County, for instance, saw had 56% of its voters cast a ballot for the U.S. Senate race between Democrat Cheri Beasley and Ted Budd. In Mecklenburg County, only 45% showed up at the polls. Budd won by about 3% points. And in last month’s primary, only three North Carolina counties had worse turnout than Mecklenburg. Turnout has lagged in heavily African-American precincts.
"We know Black voters aren’t a monolith and they shouldn’t be treated as such. We know how folks we feel when campaigns feel ignoring up until the election and in the final stretch of a campaign. We’re not doing that," Barrios said.
The Biden campaign says it will open 10 other North Carolina field offices over the next two weeks. And North Carolina has been part of a $25 million TV ad campaign in swing states that started last fall.
The investment in North Carolina appears to be the biggest Democrats have made since the Obama years in 2008 and 2012. Obama won the state in 2008 with a razor-thin zero point 3 percent margin — Democrat’s last presidential win.
And it’s certainly larger than the on-the-ground presence Democrats had during the pandemic.
"So in 2020 you know as far as operations were concerned it was mostly at a virtual level, for obvious reasons," Barrios said.
Mecklenburg Democratic Party chair Drew Kromer says he’s been able to hire new full-time paid staff.
"We are going to have a staff presence that is four or five times the size that it was last time," he said.
Still, the Biden campaign is running into headwinds. A Wall Street Journal poll released Tuesday shows the ex-president ahead by six, 49% to 43%. A spokesman for the North Carolina Republican Party said in a statement that Trump and his campaign are "executing at a high level" and pointed to the ex-president raising nearly $66 million in March.