VP Kamala Harris headed back to Charlotte Thursday. What you need to know

Tyler Dukes
·2 min read
21

For the second week in a row, Vice President Kamala Harris is headed back to North Carolina.

Harris will be in Charlotte Thursday to open a field office there, one of 10 the campaign said it’s launching across the state in an effort to elect Democrats in 2024. The campaign has not provided details of the trip as of Sunday afternoon.

Harris’ visit will mark the fourth time this year the state has played host to the vice president — and her second trip to Charlotte — as the contest between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump heats up. Just last week, Biden and Harris stumped together in Raleigh to tout the administration’s efforts on affordable health care and attend a private fundraiser.

The frequency of their trips isn’t likely to slow down.

With North Carolina poised as a key battleground state in the Biden-Trump rematch, political insiders expect to see a lot of both candidates in the coming months. Despite losing the general election to Biden in 2020, Trump won the Tar Heel State by a 1.4-point margin — far more narrowly than his nearly 3.7-point lead over Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016.

There’s “hardly a week that’s gonna go by that you’re not going to have either a Democratic principal in state or Republican principal in state. I think that’s because North Carolina is going to be incredibly competitive,” Democratic strategist Morgan Jackson told The News & Observer last month.

In her visit last week at John Chavis Memorial Park in Raleigh, Harris decried the country’s high maternal mortality rate, praising the Biden administration’s efforts to expand Medicaid to cover more postpartum care, The N&O reported.

In previous visits to North Carolina, Harris has stopped in Durham to announce millions in federal funding for women- and minority-led businesses in the state. Her January trip to Charlotte, where she spoke and met with students at Eastway Middle School, focused on violence prevention and mental health.

For his part, Trump rallied supporters in Greensboro ahead of the North Carolina primary, when he easily defeated fellow Republican and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley.