Harris upended Trump’s electoral fortunes. Just look at North Carolina.

ASHEBORO, North Carolina — Last month, Donald Trump and his team were still predicting blue states like Minnesota, Virginia, New Jersey and New Mexico could become battlegrounds this fall. Now, he’s shoring up a purple one.

On Wednesday, Trump made his third visit in four weeks to North Carolina — a state he won twice and where he was solidly leading President Joe Biden in polling over the last year.

Trump’s visit here, tucked between campaign stops this week in several swing states that he lost in 2020 while Democrats gathered in Chicago for their convention, was another sign of the dramatic change in his electoral fortunes after Vice President Kamala Harris moved to the top of the ticket.

Trump’s most loyal supporters in Asheboro, a ruby-red patch of the state, lined up for hours to attend, showing the strength of his MAGA base. It was also his first outdoor rally since surviving an attempted assassination last month, and law enforcement officers with rifles were more noticeable than usual on the airplane hangar roofs around the rally site.

Outside of his tightly secured rally, though — past the vendors hawking red caps and flags on the rural road leading to Trump’s event — Republicans admit that the changed dynamics of the race in North Carolina are striking. In interviews with several longtime GOP officials, operatives and strategists in the state, each said their money is still on Trump to win the state.

But they acknowledged that, as of now, such a victory would likely only be narrow. And they expressed concern about what the decreased Trump margins would mean for other down ballot races in the state, particularly Republicans’ efforts to flip the governor’s office.

Wearing a “Let’s Go Brandon” shirt at the rally, Geanie McDowell, 46, of Asheboro, said she’s concerned about the increasing difficulty to win the state with Harris at the top of the ticket.

“It’s become a tighter race. Now we’re worried Kamala might take the lead,” McDowell said, explaining that because “she’s younger, and she’s a woman,” Harris may appeal to some voters in a new way.

What should Trump do to keep a Harris win from happening? “Keep his mouth shut,” McDowell said.

Sen. Ted Budd (R-N.C.) said there won’t be “a real race until after Labor Day,” adding that he was confident of Trump’s prospects in the state when Republicans talk about Harris’ record, safety and the current high prices.

“We’ve got a great pathway to victory, as long as we focus on the issues,” Budd told POLITICO.

Asked if that meant staying away from personal attacks on Harris, as some top Republicans have advised, Budd said: “Look, there’s a lot of content out there.”

“But I think people are concerned about how to make their lives better,” he said.

Trump, as he has done on other occasions recently, during his speech Wednesday mocked suggestions that he should refrain from name-calling and personal insults.

The state, which Trump won in both 2016 and 2020, had for months looked like an easy win for him this cycle. Trump led Biden in virtually every public poll conducted in North Carolina since last fall. Earlier this year, Trump tapped two native North Carolinians — Michael Whatley and his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump — to serve as chair and co-chair of his remade Republican National Committee. But the former president is continuing to spend time and resources visiting here.

“We’ve got to win this state,” Trump said from the stage on Wednesday. “This state is a very, very big state to win. We’ve won it twice, and we’re going to win it again.”

Trump remarked that he recently inquired with “a couple of the people” about his strength in North Carolina compared to the last two presidential elections.

“They said, ‘Sir, you’re much hotter, you’re more popular,’” Trump told the crowd. “I hope that’s true.”

At Trump’s July 24 rally in Charlotte — just days after Biden dropped out, and before a full picture had emerged of the strength of Harris’ initial momentum — one Republican official told POLITICO they suspected Trump might only come back to the state once or twice more before the November election, citing the need to deploy him in more competitive swing states.

But he has now returned twice since then, and during that time some public polls have shown Harris with a new, slight lead over Trump.

“Why is North Carolina even in play at this point?” asked one prominent Republican operative in the state, who was granted anonymity to speak freely. “Why is Trump feeling like he’s got to spend so much time in North Carolina?”

Even though Republicans here acknowledge Harris’ recent show of strength, there are many reasons to doubt that Democrats, despite forcing a competitive race in North Carolina, can pull it off. For one, they haven’t since 2008, when Barack Obama became the last Democratic presidential candidate to carry the state.

“Decapitating the top of their ticket and installing Harris has helped diminish the enthusiasm gap for Democrats,” said Jonathan Felts, a longtime GOP consultant in the state, “but Harris still doesn’t provide North Carolina Democrats with a better message for rural North Carolinians.”

And Felts argued that Harris would need “a huge turnout from rural voters similar to Obama 2008” in order to win.

But for now, horse race polling shows Harris is ahead, or at least neck and neck, with Trump in the state.

“Things have tightened up. There’s no two ways about that,” said a Republican strategist here. “There’s an element of ‘let’s do a big surge and see if we can take it off the map again.’”

Another Republican operative in North Carolina, who is also apprised on strategy for the presidential election, similarly said that Trump’s recent blitz here was an effort to stop Harris’ momentum.

“Let’s go ahead and solidify it so we’re not fighting for it in October,” the operative said of the Trump team’s strategy.

During his characteristically meandering speech here — which was intended to focus on national security — Trump repeatedly referred to Harris by one of his recent nicknames for her, “Comrade Kamala,” and said he would require on Inauguration Day the resignations of “every single senior military official who touched the Afghanistan disaster.”

And he drew one of the loudest applause lines of the afternoon when he vowed to “get critical race theory and transgender insanity the hell out of our armed forces.”

Beyond Trump appearing more frequently than expected in North Carolina, Republicans’ strategy for Harris is to try to paint a policy contrast with her, framing the vice president as too liberal and someone who would usher in an economic agenda that would further hurt voters’ pocketbooks.

Asked during a Tuesday news conference how the GOP here is going to reach young voters — who overwhelmingly support Harris — Jason Simmons, the chair of the North Carolina Republican Party, said “the No. 1 issue for young voters is the economy,” and that they see “the American dream is now out of reach.”

And many of Trump’s supporters who braved the hours-long wait for his rally Wednesday don’t believe there’s a chance he loses the Tar Heel state.

“I feel like things are going to change this time due to the fact that God spared his life during the assassination attempt,” said Shelby Hawkins, of Mount Airy. “I believe it was for a purpose.”