Debbie Wasserman Schultz will travel to Arizona, Texas and Georgia. | AP Photo DNC chief heads to 3 red states

Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz is preparing to embark on a campaign-style trip through three Republican-leaning states where her party badly wants to make inroads, DNC officials told POLITICO.

The Florida congresswoman and party chairwoman will address a meeting of the DNC in Arizona late this week, before heading to Texas and Georgia for party-building events.


In Texas, she’ll appear at a fundraiser with Democratic Rep. Joaquin Castro, the first-term San Antonio congressman national Democrats have embraced as a rising star. And on the eve of her trip to Georgia, Wasserman Schultz will put forward Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed to be a member of the DNC executive committee.

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All three states — Arizona, Texas and Georgia — have been solidly conservative in national elections, but Democrats see the potential to make them more electorally competitive thanks to their growing racial diversity.

“Diversity is our hallmark and it is also the direction that the country is going,” Wasserman Schultz told POLITICO in an interview this week. “That’s why we’re very hopeful about the Democratic Party’s prospects in states like Texas and Arizona and Georgia.”

DNC officials said the meeting in Arizona would be an opportunity to reemphasize the party’s commitment to tapping — and representing — the changing national electorate. The committee plans to launch a nationwide push to register new voters “and play offense in places like Arizona, Texas and Georgia,” a Democratic official said.

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“This issue is more important in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision that struck down parts of the Voting Rights Act. The Voter Protection department is tracking legislative and court actions and working with allied groups to counter actions that infringe on citizens’ rights,” the official continued.

The party also aims to expand and develop the set of tactical tools Democrats wielded to great effect in 2012: building out their digital and voter-targeting operations, and intensifying staff and candidate training through the Association of State Democratic Chairs.

In an early draft of Wasserman Schultz’s Friday remarks — which an official shared with POLITICO — the chair trumpets a big-picture contrast between what she calls Democratic diversity and Republican rigidity.

( PHOTOS: Debbie Wasserman Schultz)

“Despite all their talk about changing their ways, Republicans are becoming even more exclusive, more obstructionist, more rigid, and more ideological. Democrats are winning because we’re inclusive, results-oriented and pragmatic,” Wasserman Schultz plans to say. “As Americans, at our core we’re problem-solvers. We want our government to get things done, and that’s what voters are seeing President Obama and Democrats do. And as long as we don’t stray from what the American people want — and expect — from their government, we will win.”

In prepared remarks, Wasserman Schultz also reassures the committee that the DNC has “a plan to retire our debt” — a subject of some concern in Washington, after the DNC raised just $3.9 million in July and ended the month with more than $18 million in debt. The Republican National Committee raised $5.9 million and had a clear balance sheet.

Rather than detailing the debt-retirement plan, the DNC chief mocks Republicans for touting their committee’s financial prowess after 2012: “We had a plan to spend our resources — and win — while the RNC is boasting about their financial situation. I say to them, ‘Well, you get what you pay for.’”

RNC spokeswoman Kirsten Kukowski responded to Wasserman Schultz’s planned political travel by pointing to the two committees’ financial scoreboard.

“The DNC is $18 million in debt and they appear to be struggling to raise money. I wish them luck trying to make inroads in three states while the RNC is well on our way to building a 50-state strategy and completely overhauling how we contact voters,” Kukowski said.

The three states Wasserman Schultz intends to highlight through her travel are all definite “reach” states for Democrats in the immediate term: Mitt Romney won all three of them easily in last year’s presidential race.

But Democrats have already attempted to chip away at the GOP’s existing advantages in each could-be battleground. Last year, the party mounted a competitive campaign for Senate in Arizona, where Democrat Richard Carmona lost by a narrow 3-percentage-point margin to now-Sen. Jeff Flake.

National Democrats have vowed during the midterm cycle to put Georgia’s open-seat Senate race in play, holding up nonprofit executive Michelle Nunn as a potential map-broadening candidate.

In Texas, a gang of former Obama strategists have founded Battleground Texas, an outside group focused on registering and engaging the Lone Star State’s changing electorate in the hope of putting Texas in play in future election cycles.

“Texas, we look at as a huge opportunity,” Wasserman Schultz said. “We’re making Texas a priority and I expect to make significant gains.”