NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Former Vice President Kamala Harris made a surprise appearance on Tuesday with the Democratic candidate in a closely watched Tennessee special election for Congress, marking the first time since she left office that she has returned to the campaign trail for another candidate.

The race for the open House seat is in a district that President Donald Trump won by more than 20 percentage points last year, and is seen as a long shot for Democrats. But Harris’ decision to campaign is the latest sign that the Dec. 2 election is being seriously contested. National party leaders now see the contest as an important test of the political environment before next year’s midterm elections.

Early voting has already begun in the race between state Rep. Aftyn Behn, the Democrat, and Matt Van Epps, a veteran and the Republican nominee. Van Epps recently received some help from Trump in the form of a virtual rally.

Harris Headlines Event

Harris headlined a canvassing kickoff event at a local park for Behn on Tuesday afternoon after making an appearance on the campus of Fisk University, a historically Black college that is in the contested district.

“Why am I in Tennessee? Because I know the power is in the South,” Harris said into a bullhorn at Hadley Park in Nashville. She did not mention Behn by name but urged the crowd to get out the vote in two weeks.

“This election is 14 days from today!” she said. Several of the students, phone cameras held high, were not registered to vote in the district, but said they appreciated Harris drawing attention to their campuses and the state of Tennessee politics.

Behn spoke before Harris’ arrival, telling the crowd the election was “the most competitive race in America.”

Harris was already scheduled to be in Nashville this week for her book tour for her election memoir, “107 Days,” and adding the campaign event is a sign of her growing engagement in national politics a year after her defeat. She had considered running for governor of California but ultimately decided against a candidacy, and she has left open the door to running for president again.

Before this month’s election in California, Harris also attended a rally for Proposition 50, a ballot measure to redraw the state’s congressional map to add as many as five new Democratic seats. Voters overwhelmingly passed the measure.

The open 7th Congressional District in Tennessee includes downtown Nashville but also stretches from the Kentucky border in the north to the Alabama border in the south. The vacancy was created this year when Rep. Mark Green, a Republican, resigned to work in the private sector.

Both parties have begun to spend more substantively in the closing weeks of a race in which turnout is expected to be low.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Shane Goldmacher/Vincent Alban
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