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For decades, ambitious politicians with their sights set on a future presidential run made pilgrimages to Iowa and New Hampshire, casually showing up at local fund-raising fairs and dinners as if they were simply in the area.
When President Biden pushed Democrats to put South Carolina first on their presidential primary calendar, the geography of the party’s political fighters changed. Now they are working to build support not in largely white places in the North, but in a southern state with a predominantly black primary voter base that better represents the modern Democratic Party.
So when Vice President Kamala Harris arrived in Orangeburg, S.C., on Friday for her ninth visit to South Carolina since taking office, she arrived as a familiar figure. While she and Biden are running for renomination without serious challengers, the relationships she has developed in the state are expected to help lift her ticket to a comfortable victory Saturday in the party’s first recognized primary.
Harris’ trip, as well as her college tour last year and an ongoing tour to defend abortion rights and promote the Democratic agenda, also served two broader purposes: working to shore up Biden’s persistent vulnerabilities among black voters and young voters, and keep the first woman and first woman of color to serve as vice president in the next presidential race in 2028.
Perhaps South Carolina’s most influential Democrat already agrees with Ms. Harris as a future White House candidate.
“I made it very clear months ago that I support her,” said Rep. James E. Clyburn, whose endorsement of Biden in 2020 ahead of his state’s primary election helped rejuvenate the former vice president’s rocky campaign and propel him to the nomination. “That is why we have to re-elect the ticket. Then we talk about viability.”
Harris, who ended her 2020 presidential campaign months before the South Carolina primary, has sought to deepen her ties here.
“There is an unspoken language between the vice president and African American women in this state,” said Trav Robertson, former chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party. “She doesn’t have to walk into a room and say things, because they already know they have a shared experience.”
Harris was part of a parade of Biden campaign surrogates who traveled to South Carolina to support the president in a primary whose outcome is hardly in doubt. Biden’s competition is Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota, who is little-known and has spent nothing on television ads in the state, and self-help author Marianne Williamson, who garnered minimal support in the New Hampshire primary even without Biden. the ballot.
No one has energized more voters in South Carolina than Harris, who positions herself as a natural successor to Biden but tends not to appear at the top of Democratic wish lists for 2028 presidential candidates. On Friday in Orangeburg, S.C., met with a group of local pastors, some of whom he has had relationships for years; she staged a photo lineup that included supporters of her 2020 campaign; and spoke at a final rally before the primaries.
Their local connections were clear. Jaime Harrison, an Orangeburg native and chairman of the Democratic National Committee, called her “our MVP.” Mr. Clyburn, from the stage, affectionately called her “my girl.”
“In 2020, it was South Carolina that put President Joe Biden and me on the path to the White House,” he told the crowd. “It is thanks to that work that Joe Biden is president of the United States and I am the first woman and the first black woman to be vice president of the United States.”
Biden’s campaign hired a local staff of four and encouraged visits from politicians who support him, from the well-known (Gov. Gavin Newsom of California) to the somewhat well-known (Mitch Landrieu, former mayor of New Orleans) to the little known. (Lieutenant Governor Austin Davis of Pennsylvania).
Davis spent Wednesday chasing Biden at six stops in South Carolina. Davis, who is just 34 and black, volunteered his time for the campaign to deliver his message to young black people, an audience that polls show is skeptical of endorsing the president.
Davis acknowledged in an interview that he was a new face in South Carolina.
“At the end of my speech, I had a lot of fans,” he said. “I think they said, ‘Oh, we’re glad you showed up. We had no idea who you were, but we’re glad you showed up.’”
Some surrogates have tried to motivate Democratic voters by warning that Republicans pose a threat to them. Speaking to black voters in Ridgeland, South Carolina, on Tuesday, Landrieu alluded to right-wing “rhetoric” that sometimes includes racist messages.
“You are from the South; you hear those dog whistles like a train coming down the tracks,” he said. “Some people say they want to make America great again. I have news for all of you: America is already great.”
“It always was,” a woman in the crowd shouted.
The push to bolster Harris’s political prospects extends beyond her efforts to ingratiate herself with voters who are likely to have outsize influence on the election of the 2028 Democratic nominee.
Democratic fundraising giant Emily’s List, which works to elect women who support abortion rights, has said it will spend tens of millions of dollars to defend and promote Ms. Harris this year.
The group sees its success as a key extension of its mission to elevate more Democratic women to public office. The organization will be joined by other groups, including the National Women’s Law Center, who are preparing to act as campaign watchdogs, ready to denounce sexist and racist attacks against Ms. Harris.
A poll conducted by Emily’s List last year found that Harris had high favorability ratings among key sectors of the Democratic coalition, including black women, younger voters and college graduates. Still, she remained quite unknown to many.
About a third of Democratic and independent voters, according to the group’s survey, did not know her personal history, her background as California’s attorney general and junior senator, or what she had done as vice president.
Sen. Laphonza Butler of California, who served as head of Emily’s List before Newsom appointed her to fill the seat left vacant when Sen. Dianne Feinstein died last year, said the frenetic nature of the general election 2020, which was dominated by the pandemic, had provided limited opportunities for Harris to build ties with voters nationally.
“He still needs to introduce himself to the country,” Butler said. “People just don’t know about her because she didn’t get the chance to tell her story.”
Most immediately, however, Harris and Biden’s team are focused on achieving a large margin of victory in South Carolina.
Local Democrats have urged their supporters, who are free to choose which primary party they vote in, to vote in the Democratic race and not wait for the Republican contest later this month. Some may be considering strategically backing former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley in her high-stakes battle against former President Donald J. Trump.
Clay Middleton, a veteran Democratic operative and senior adviser to Biden’s team in the state, said the campaign had not told him its voter turnout goal.
He did say the campaign’s strategy of directing surrogates like Newsom and Landrieu to out-of-the-way rural towns was an effort to boost turnout in counties that often underperform in state elections.
“Those counties rarely get high-level substitutes,” Middleton said. “These surrogates have spent time there, connecting with people.”
Although the Biden campaign has carefully avoided making predictions about turnout on Saturday, Clyburn on Friday set the benchmark for success at between 150,000 and 200,000 votes, of which the president received between 70 and 75 percent.
“Seventy percent would be a success for me,” he said in an interview.
In 2016, when Hillary Clinton defeated Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, just over 371,000 people voted. In 2020, with no competitive Republican primary but with 12 Democrats on the ballot in a race that was still up for grabs, about 537,000 people voted. South Carolina did not hold a primary election in 2012, when President Barack Obama sought reelection, and no Democrats filed to run against him in the state.
JA Moore, a Democratic state representative in South Carolina who was one of the first state officials to endorse Ms. Harris’ 2020 presidential campaign, said her frequent visits as vice president had served as a “proving ground” for build relationships with parts of the country. the party’s base (Black, young and female voters) who were critical to Biden’s 2020 general election winning coalition.
“She has been here building real, connected relationships, specifically in the black community, but also with women and young people,” Mr. Moore said. “Just the fact that she shows up at venues helps a lot.”
Lisa Lerer contributed reports.
