The primary goal of Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign is to ensure that the first wave of enthusiasm that accompanied her quick climb to the Democratic presidential nomination is channeled into a long-term effort that will enlist a phalanx of volunteers before November.
The campaign has been busy recruiting volunteers for the rallies where Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, have been speaking to throngs of thousands of people around the nation in the last week in an attempt to secure victory.
“People who want to support the ticket are exhibiting a very real, very organic energy,” stated Dan Kanninen, the battleground states director for the Harris campaign. “We are putting that zeal and passion into practice. And at all of these events, our well-organized campaign teams—more than 1,500 staff members and 260 offices—as well as our extensive presence throughout the battleground states allow us to effectively channel that enthusiasm into volunteer shifts that directly lead to further volunteer recruitment, voter contact, door-knocking, and phone calls—all of which help us move the campaign forward in a way that actually noticeably alters the margins in these extremely close states.
In order to emphasize this point, the Harris campaign provided NBC News with updated figures that it claimed demonstrated its efforts to provide its supporters with avenues for involvement in the race.
According to a campaign official, 1,000 of the 5,010 volunteers who signed up last week in Nevada were for the next day to participate in a weekly Sunday event series. The campaign official stated that Sunday was the most sign-up day for the weekly series to date due to the spike in sign-ups. The official stated that in contrast, 669% more people attended the festivities on Sunday than at the last one, which took place on July 7 before President Joe Biden withdrew.
Over the course of the weekend, the campaign spoke with 13,000 people in Wisconsin and received over 1,100 volunteer sign-ups at a Detroit rally, according to the official.
“All those people will be contacted, they will be moved, and they will have a positive experience,” Kanninen stated, comparing the campaign’s actions to those of the Obama campaigns in 2008 and 2012, both of which he was involved in. “We’ll demand more of them. We’re hoping they’ll invite their pals. Additionally, it’s a snowball that keeps growing.
Since entering the contest, Harris has gained ground on former President Donald Trump in national polls; Trump has attempted to brush this increase off as a transient “honeymoon” phase.
The Harris campaign believes that this initial fervor should be built upon rather than wasted.
According to Kanninen, the campaign apparatus that Harris inherited from Biden has been diligently organizing in the swing states known as the “big seven”: North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, and Pennsylvania.
He stated, “We anticipate them being close once more.” The teams that are there, have organized, developed relationships with volunteers, and created systems that are putting this tremendous enthusiasm into action by getting people to sign up for shifts on the spot. “Our entire campaign has been built with the goal of winning a close contest,” the campaign manager said.
The Harris campaign’s national co-chair, Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester, D-Del., added that the campaign has always intended to fight to the very end—that is, until Election Day.
“When Joe Biden was running, we knew this was going to be a difficult election,” the woman stated. “We never imagined that we would undervalue any vote or that we wouldn’t exert the necessary amount of effort.” Furthermore, I want us to remain focused on the goal. We must harness this enthusiasm and energy to propel ourselves through to the finish line.
When asked how the campaign is organizing itself to better suit Harris, Kanninen replied that the campaign’s strategy and goal are still the same, but that Harris’s level of intensity “gives us a lot more to work with.”
“The constant difficulty lies in maintaining growth and being ready for that crucial moment when a campaign truly takes off,” he stated. All campaigns must accomplish that. Thus, we need to keep expanding and growing, provide a location for volunteers to go, a way for voters to get involved in the campaign, and a way to highlight the differences between Donald Trump and the vice president. .. It does mean late evenings, however, I’m not sure if that keeps me up at night.