Vice President Kamala Harris is heading on a monthlong tour of a dozen colleges in swing states that are critical to her reelection hopes alongside President Biden.
The “Fight for our Freedoms College Tour” will begin on Sept. 14 at Hampton University in Virginia and include stops at schools in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Nevada and Wisconsin, the White House said Thursday.
The tour is billed as a way to engage students on topics that are important to young Americans, including abortion access, gun safety, the climate and LGBT issues.
“This generation is critical to the urgent issues that are at stake right now for our future,” Ms. Harris said. “It is young leaders throughout America who know what the solutions look like and are organizing in their communities to make them a reality. My message to students is clear: We are counting on you, we need you, you are everything.”
Young voters were considered a critical voting bloc for the victorious Biden-Harris ticket in 2020, with nearly six in 10 voters aged 18 to 29 choosing the Democrats over the Republican incumbents, according to Pew Research Center.
However, Democrats saw their numbers slump in the midterms. An Associated Press VoteCast survey that found showed Democratic House candidates received 53% of the youth vote in the Nov. 8 election, compared to 41% for Republican candidates.
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Turnout among young people could make or break Mr. Biden’s reelection bid.
His administration is putting an emphasis on issues that animate young people, including ways to mitigate the fallout from a 2022 Supreme Court decision that overturned the nationwide right to abortion; efforts to ban military-style weapons as school shootings continue to plague America; and a shift toward greener energy sources as young people say they’ll bear the brunt of warming global temperatures.
A plan to wipe away thousands of dollars in student loan debt for each borrower ran into trouble in Congress and the courts, so Mr. Biden introduced the SAVE income-driven plan that calculates loan payments based on a borrower’s income and family size and forgives remaining balances after a certain number of years.
“Gen Z is a powerful voting bloc, they have played a deciding factor in elections across the country since 2020 and will be ready to do so at the top level in 2024,” said Sara Guillermo, president and CEO of Ignite, an organization that trains young women to run for office.
“This is a generation that is driven to vote and get politically active by the issues they care about,” she said. “A majority of Gen Z women say abortion, gun safety and climate change are priority issues for them. Vice President Harris has been outspoken on those issues and is likely to engage well with college students as a result.”
Ms. Harris plans to visit a variety of schools, including state colleges, community colleges, apprenticeship programs, colleges that serve large Hispanic populations and historically black colleges and universities, or HBCUs.
While they are official events, the White House description of them sounds like campaign-style rallies. It says Ms. Harris will bring together “thousands of students for high-energy, large-scale events.”
Ms. Harris made history in 2021 as the first woman — and first woman of color — to become vice president, which could resonate with young voters.
“Gen Z is the most diverse generation in America, and they want to see leadership that reflects this,” Ms. Guillermo said.
However, Ms. Harris’s broad approval rating has been underwater since late 2021. Roughly 40% of Americans disapprove of her performance compared to over 51% who disapprove, according to a FiveThirtyEight average.
Hoping to turn things around by 2024, Ms. Harris is maintaining an aggressive travel schedule that’s included stops around the country to decry GOP attempts to limit abortion access.
She recently visited Indonesia for a major summit of Asian leaders instead of Mr. Biden, who is traveling to India for the G-20 summit.
After Hampton University, Ms. Harris plans to visit North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in Greensboro, North Carolina, on Sept. 15; and Morehouse College in Atlanta on Sept. 26, according to initial details from the White House.
Other known stops will include the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Madison, Wisconsin; the College of Southern Nevada in Las Vegas; and Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Arizona.
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
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