The campaign has opened up free ticket registration for the event which will begin at 2pm on Saturday Aug. 17 at the Winston-Salem Fairgrounds.
According to the site, Forest will focus “on a message of unity over division and decency over incivility.”
A recent poll by Democrat-leaning Public Policy Polling showed Cooper with a slight edge over Forest with 45% of registered voters favoring Cooper and 41% favoring Forest. In the poll release, PPP said, “We also find a close race for Governor, with Roy Cooper leading Dan Forest 45-41. This represents a significant tightening from PPP’s last poll of the race in January when Cooper led 47-35. The movement since then is due to Forest consolidating his support among Republican leaning voters.” The poll surveyed 610 registered voters on June 17th and 18th. The margin of error was +/-4.0% and 29% of the respondents were online.
While Forest has been raising campaign money for an expected gubernatorial run, he described his campaign six months ago as an “exploratory committee” for governor. A campaign news release on Tuesday said the “exploratory” language has now been dropped.
The AP contributed to this report.
