Harris campaign seizes on suburban women as a key part of its North Carolina strategy

When Vice President Kamala Harris took the reins of the Democratic nomination in late July, something happened in North Carolina.

Volunteers started pouring in by the thousands. Of the more than 23,500 people who stepped forward, 94% of them had never done so before, according to the campaign. In the week after President Joe Biden stepped aside, voter registration among women overall spiked and was even more pronounced among women of color, according to a tracking firm.

And all of it happened before the worst scandal yet hit GOP gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson, in which he proclaimed himself, according to CNN reporting, a “Black Nazi.”

Robinson had already been regularly featured in North Carolina ads targeted at women where he advocated for a ban on all abortion, saying that it wasn’t about the life of a mother.

“It’s about killing a child because you weren’t responsible enough to keep your skirt down,” Robinson says on video.

The turmoil around Robinson and the signs of a surge in energy around Harris is sustaining Democrats’ optimism in the Tarheel state, particularly among women, even though the state hasn’t gone blue since former President Barack Obama won it in 2008.

Part of the Harris campaign strategy in North Carolina, according to a campaign official, includes attempting to bulk up turnout not just among Black voters but among women in and around the suburbs. That is on top of attempting to make inroads in the rural parts of the state. They also are targeting Republicans they have identified as having been turned off by Trump — or Robinson. That includes in counties where Nikki Haley, the former governor of neighboring South Carolina, over-performed in the Republican primary.

At a Sept. 12 rally in Greensboro, N.C., some of Harris’ biggest cheer lines came around reproductive rights, an issue animating female voters across the country.

“Think about it, because of Trump’s abortion bans, women are being refused care during miscarriage,” Harris said. Then, she referenced her debate with Trump. “And when asked on Tuesday night, Donald Trump refused to say that he would veto a national abortion ban. You remember that he refused to answer that question?”

Tom Bonier, whose firm TargetSmart tracks voter registration trends, said North Carolina saw a surge in new women registrants the week of July 21 — just after Biden stepped aside and endorsed Harris, relative to the same week in 2020. For the week after Harris became the presumptive nominee, there was a 61.5% increase in voter registration among North Carolina women. And there was a 145% increase over 2022 during that same week. Of those, there was a 557% increase in voter registration among Black women under 30 years of age.

Bonier takes all of this to point to a higher turnout of Democratic voters in North Carolina.

“It’s massive. You’re talking about not just a whole bunch of new registrants and voters who are quite likely to participate in the elections very high, but it generally comes to be indicative of higher enthusiasm among that group in general,” he said. “This means women in general, especially younger women, including women of color, are likely to turn out at a much higher rate than they otherwise would have. Certainly that’s all we need to put North Carolina in play.”

In 2020, former President Donald Trump won by just 1.3%. Since then, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, and the state has experienced a rise in population around its metropolitan strongholds of Raleigh and Charlotte.

“North Carolinians — from the suburbs to the cities to our rural communities — are rejecting Donald Trump and Mark Robinson’s extreme Project 2025 agenda to ban abortion and raise costs on families,” Dory MacMillan, the Harris campaign spokesperson in North Carolina, said in a statement. “Meanwhile, our campaign is growing in momentum as we continue showing up in communities all across the state to share Vice President Harris’ vision for a New Way Forward where our rights are protected and every North Carolinian has the opportunity to not just get by, but get ahead.”

Republicans have their doubts. Particularly since rural North Carolina is hardcore Trump country. Trump's campaign has repeatedly professed confidence in the state. Still, it has poured money into ads there in a sign it recognizes a threat exists. On Saturday, Trump is to attend a rally in Wilmington, N.C. Robinson is not expected to attend.

Of Democrats making gains with suburban women, one Trump ally said, “Good luck with that.”

And a former North Carolina Republican Party official cast doubt on the notion that Robinson’s issues would ultimately make or break the state for the GOP.  Democrats “had a shot irrespective of this” in North Carolina because of the high population growth in urban centers and in particular in Republican leaning suburbs, the former official said.

"Now you have a political intervening event," they added. “It’s going to be a test of whether down-ballot hurts the top.”

Dallas Woodhouse, the North Carolina executive director of American Majority, a conservative group, called the revelations about Robinson “concerning" and "disappointing.”

“Nobody wants to see this kind of thing about their political party five or six weeks before Election Day,” Woodhouse said. “Some sober reflection this morning I think shows you that a, the fundamentals of North Carolina, not by a lot but by a little bit, durably, continue to favor Trump.”

But Thomas Mills, a longtime consultant in the state and founder and publisher of PoliticsNC.com, said Robinson’s controversies have the potential to depress Republican voter turnout overall, particularly since Democrats have Trump on record repeatedly vouching for Robinson’s character. The day after CNN broke the story, Harris had already launched a television ad featuring the two together. Trump had called Robinson “Martin Luther King on steroids.”

“It gets to judgment, and it just demoralizes Republicans,” said Mills. He noted that there is a segment of the Republican Party already unhappy with Trump who would be even more turned off after seeing the allegations against Robinson. “If those people decide they’re not going to vote, or they’re going to actually vote for the Democrat, in a state like North Carolina, where 75,000 votes out of 5.5 million make the difference, that goes a long way.”

Longtime Democratic consultant Morgan Jackson, who has long worked for gubernatorial candidate Josh Stein, the current attorney general, emphasized how equally divided North Carolina is between the deep rural parts of the state and the more urban and suburban population centers.

“It’s a 50-50 state. We have been polling this race extensively, it’s as tight as it possibly can be,” Jackson said of the presidential race. “The truth is there are very few … purple counties in North Carolina. Most of them are deep blue and getting bluer or deep red and getting redder.

“The way you win statewide in North Carolina,” he said, “is you win on the margins.”

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com