The smell of fried fish was lingering on Sunday afternoon, and there was Bill Clinton beneath a treerich 888, wearing a Harris-Walz camouflage cap and edging closer and closer to his modest audience the longer he spoke.
It was a fittingly intimate setting for Peach County, Ga., a county where elections are decided by mere hundreds of votes. And for Mr. Clinton, who rose to power as “the man from Hope,” drawing on his Arkansas roots, it was a chance to engage in a little homespun politicking before early voting begins Tuesday in Georgia, a key battleground state.
“It’s going to come down to whether you are willing to do one more time what you did when you elected not only Joe Biden and Kamala Harris four years ago, but Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff,” Mr. Clinton said, referring to the two Democrats Georgia elected to the Senate. “And if you are, we will win. And if you are not, you will regret it for the rest of your life.”
From a church service in Albany, where the former president reminisced about campaigning alongside the baseball great Hank Aaron, to the fish fry in Fort Valley attended by a few hundred people, Mr. Clinton used the opening hours of a two-day blitz to try to help Ms. Harris bump up her score wherever she can.
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SKIP ADVERTISEMENTThe fish fry, in a predominantly rural area about two hours south of Atlanta, suggested few places were too small to seek votes — even for a former president.
ImageFormer President Bill Clinton addresses the crowd at the Get Out The Vote Fish Fry in Fort Valley, Ga. on Sunday.Credit...David Walter Banks for The New York TimesSubscribe to The Times to read as many articles as you like.rich 888