Harris campaign has enlivened voters, say Black organizers: ‘The energy is palpable’

Black grassroots organizers who played a critical role in mobilizing voters in the last presidential election say they are seeing an uptick in interest in their groups and a jolt of energy after Kamala Harris took Joe Biden's place at the top of the Democratic ticket.

"I hear nothing but enthusiasm," said Helen Butler, a longtime voting rights organizer who runs the nonpartisan Georgia Coalition for the People's Agenda. "More people are calling to volunteer. The young people are saying, 'What can we do?' All of our activities are nonpartisan. So we're training them to just talk about civic engagement and why public policy matters."

The observations from organizers come as the Harris campaign has intensified its momentum in the race. It solidified the support of the Democratic party, earned enough delegates to become the presumptive nominee and has seen colossal fundraising numbers.

Harris's campaign says it has raised more than $100m, including a staggering $81m in the first 24 hours after Joe Biden left the race. That total was accrued from more than 500,000 grassroots donors who gave for the first time in the 2024 cycle, the campaign said.

Grassroots groups played a critical role in 2020, mobilizing nonwhite voters - who tend to support Democrats - at record levels. Overall, turnout in the 2020 election was at its highest since 1900.

Initial polls show Harris in a neck-and-neck race with Donald Trump, but there are indications of significant shifts in the race. A CNN poll released last week found that 50% of Harris backers said their support of her was more pro-Harris than anti-Trump. In a June CNN poll, just 37% of Biden's supporters said their support was about backing the president rather than being against Trump.

"It does change the energy, and to a certain extent, it changes the messages," said Cliff Albright, a co-founder of Black Voters Matter Fund, which is supportive of Harris's candidacy. "The full toolbox is open. We can go anti-Trump, or we can go pro-Kamala, or we can talk about some aspects of her record more, and the administration more, so it just expands the tools that we have at our disposal."

The first week of Harris's candidacy has been bolstered by a groundswell of support. 44,000 people joined a Zoom call led by Black women on Sunday evening in the first hours after Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee, which raised more than $1.5m. A call the next evening hosted by Black men reported 53,000 participants and raised more than $1.3m. A call hosted by white women Thursday evening had more than 160,000 people on it and reportedly raised $8.5m. A similar south Asian women call for Harris had more than 10,000 people and raised more than $300,000. A "white dudes for Harris" call on Monday raised around $4m.

"I think the energy is palpable," said Angela Lang, an organizer with Black Leaders Organizing Communities (Bloc) in Milwaukee. She said that many on her team had said they would support Harris, while others were waiting to see how she reconciled her record as a prosecutor.

"I think folks understand that people are allowed to change and evolve. We've seen other presidential candidates change and evolve their stances on gay marriage, for example, so I think folks are curious to see how she reconciles that," she said. "But I don't know if [her record will] be that big of a factor in the grand scheme of things, because I think the urgency of a second Trump presidency outweighs it for some folks."

That's not to say that it will be a cakewalk for Harris. Those who helped organize the "uncommitted" vote in the primary in protest of the Biden administration's position on the war in Gaza have warned that the vice president needs to earn their vote.

Albright predicted that this campaign would be much different for Harris than her presidential primary - when she entered the race as a top tier contender and then flamed out before the Iowa primary.

"Some of it was just about the overall positioning that you had during the primary. You had the clearly progressive candidates talking about Medicare for All and other really progressive policies, and then you had those that were viewed as being more moderate, including Kamala Harris and Joe Biden," he said. "I think what we've seen now over the past four years is that some of those concerns that we had about how progressive either one of them would have been were proven to not be valid."

Both Lang and Albright have gotten a chance to speak personally with Harris and see how she approaches issues.

Albright has met with her several times to discuss the push for federal voting rights legislation - one of the key issues that was in Harris's portfolio as vice-president.

"We've obviously been impressed by her leadership and the sincerity that she [has], the dedication that she takes to some of these issues," he said.

Lang said that she briefly spoke to Harris in 2021 in Milwaukee when she had a chance to take a picture with her. She said she used the brief interaction to speak about the need to fix lead pipes in Milwaukee and emphasize that it was a social justice issue since exposure to lead has been linked to behavioral and emotional issues in children.

"It didn't feel like she was blowing me off or she was just saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, to agree," Lang said. "She immediately connected the dots and felt just as passionate as I did."