Kamala Harris drops into Georgia to stump for Ossoff, down-ballot Democrats

Former Vice President Kamala Harris and U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff fired up students from Atlanta’s historically Black colleges and universities at Clark Atlanta University on Thursday, asking young voters to make their way to the polls as early voting wraps up Friday.

About 800 students from Clark Atlanta, Morehouse College and Spelman College gathered to see Harris and Ossoff, who is up for reelection and is fighting off a challenge from Republican Congressman Mike Collins.

Both Democrats framed the 2026 midterms as a necessary check on the Trump administration. Ossoff, who has a lead over Collins in the polls, said that despite “the foolishness, the corruption, the incompetence” from the current administration, young voters “have already shattered every turnout record for young voters in a midterm election in Georgia’s history.”

“I hope it will give you courage and a sense of the history that we all are living through and that we all are making right now,” Ossoff said. “Young people are voting and voting early because young people recognize the stakes of this election.”

Harris, who graduated from Howard University, urged students to walk their frustrations to the polls.

“I’ve come here to remind you: don’t ever let anybody take your power from you. Don’t ever let anybody tell you who you are. You tell them who you are. You tell them you are active. You let them know you are paying attention. You let them know, not on my watch is this stuff going to happen without me stepping up and speaking out and acting,” Harris said.

Harris was a frequent visitor to battleground Georgia in 2024 when she was the Democratic nominee for president. She lost to President Donald Trump in Georgia by about 2 percentage points, or about 115,000 votes. She’s widely seen as a likely contender for the White House in 2028. 

This time, she was back in Georgia helping Ossoff hold onto his Senate seat and boosting other Democrats in their quest to loosen the GOP’s grip on state government.

And Harris is keeping her schedule busy while here. Earlier on Thursday, she joined Ossoff in Macon and joined NAACP president and CEO Derrick Johnson in the evening for a fireside chat. On Friday, Harris is headlining a Fulton County Democratic Party Committee fundraising dinner.

Nearly 2.4 million Georgians have cast a ballot as of Thursday, with just one more day to vote early. Election Day is Tuesday.

Harris also encouraged students to vote for Keisha Lance Bottoms, the former mayor of Atlanta, who would become the first Black woman governor in the country, and for Democrats “up and down the ticket,” saying that down-ballot races matter.

“Don’t overlook those races, because those are the folks who make decisions about your life every day,” Harris said.

The Republican Governor Association pounced at the opportunity to compare Harris and Bottoms, with deputy communications director Anna Marian Block saying that “not even Kirby Smart could coach them to a win,” if they are on the same team.

“Few people can match Kamala Harris’s failed record, but Keisha Lance Bottoms comes close,” Block said.

But Reagan Bligen, a 19-year-old junior at Clark Atlanta, said that she felt encouraged by the representation of Black women in leadership, saying that having Black women in these roles provides young women role models and is a reminder of what they can do.

“I couldn’t even get my phone out just because I was listening to what she was saying. She is very powerful. She’s very truthful. She’s very just motherly, and I just feel like right now that’s what we need,” Bligen said

Myles Billingsley, a sophomore at Clark Atlanta studying political science, said that seeing Harris and Ossoff on campus carried a lot of weight for students of color who can be overlooked by the political process.

“The fact that both Jon Ossoff and Kamala Harris actually took the time and came to our institution meant the world to us,” Billingsley said.

But while Billingsley said that students feel motivated to vote Republicans out, young voters want policy solutions from Democrats moving forward.

“I like this whole like de-Trump process. Get Trump out of office, get his policies, get his congressional people out of office. But at the same time, we want to see more from the Democratic Party than simply just ‘Trump bad.’ So if we can actually get some real policy from Democrats, a real direction on where y’all want to move in, except just anti-Trump, we would really love that,” he said.