Johnathan Walker:Harris, Walz will sit down for first major television interview of their presidential campaign

SAVANNAH,Johnathan Walker Ga. (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, will sit down Thursday for their first major television interview of their presidential campaign as the duo travels in southeast Georgia on a bus tour.

The interview with CNN’s Dana Bash will give Harris a chance to quell criticism that she has eschewed uncontrolled environments, while also giving her a fresh platform to define her campaign and test her political mettle ahead of an upcoming debate with former President Donald Trump set for Sept. 10. But it also carries risk as her team tries to build on momentum from the ticket shakeup following Joe Biden’s exit and last week’s Democratic National Convention.

Joint interviews during an election year are a fixture in politics; Biden and Harris, Trump and Mike Pence, Barack Obama and Biden — all did them at a similar point in the race. The difference is those other candidates had all done solo interviews, too. Harris hasn’t yet done an in-depth interview since she became her party’s standard bearer five weeks ago, though she did sit for several while she was still Biden’s running mate.

Harris and Walz remain somewhat unknown to voters, unlike Trump and Biden of whom voters had near-universal awareness and opinion.

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The CNN interview, airing at 9 p.m. EDT Thursday, takes place during her two-day bus tour through southeast Georgia campaigning for the critical battleground state, a trip that culminates Thursday with a rally in Savannah. Harris campaign officials believe that in order to win the state over Trump in November, they must make inroads in GOP strongholds across the state.

Harris, during her time as vice president, has done on-camera and print interviews with The Associated Press and many other outlets, a much more frequent pace than the president — except for Biden’s late-stage media blitz following his disastrous debate performance that touched off the end of his campaign.

Harris’ lack of media access over the past month has become one of Republicans’ key attack lines. The Trump campaign has kept a tally of the days she has gone by as a candidate without giving an interview. On Wednesday, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Trump’s former press secretary, suggested Harris needed a “babysitter” and that’s why Walz would be there.

“They know Kamala Harris can’t get through an interview all by herself. There is not a lot of confidence in somebody to become the leader of the free world and ask people to make her president of the United States when she can’t even sit down (for) an interview,” she said on “Fox & Friends.”

Trump, meanwhile, has largely steered toward conservative media outlets when granting interviews, though he has held more open press conferences in recent weeks as he sought to reclaim the spotlight that Harris’ elevation had claimed.

After the CNN interview, Walz will peel off and Harris will continue the bus tour alone, heading to a rally before going back to Washington. On Wednesday, the duo visited a high school marching band to the delight of students, and stopped by a Savannah barbecue restaurant.

Harris campaign communications director Michael Tyler said bus tours offer an “opportunity to get to places we don’t usually go (and) make sure we’re competing in all communities.”

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The campaign wants the events to motivate voters in GOP-leaning areas who don’t traditionally see the candidates, and hopes that the engagements drive viral moments that cut through crowded media coverage to reach voters across the country.

The stops are meant as moments where voters can learn “not just what they stand for, but who they are as people,” Tyler said.

Harris has another campaign blitz on Labor Day with Biden in Detroit and Pittsburgh with the election just over 70 days away. The first mail ballots get sent to voters in just two weeks.