WASHINGTON — The growing frenzy surrounding Kamala Harris has galvanized powerful interest groups and unions, titans of Wall Street and Hollywood, while also seizing “coconut-stuffed” progressives and Joe Biden campaign aides.
But Harris’ rapid rise to the top of the Democratic ticket is reviving another important coalition of voters: former Republicans more desperate than ever to turn the page on Donald Trump.
Decades in office, Biden offered them a moderate candidate who promised compromise in Washington. Now, anti-Trump Republicans are weighing Harris to see if he can appeal to the center with his own policy proposals and his own candidate.
Harris has already left the Republicans behind support from former Georgia Lt. Jeff Duncan.
Former New Jersey governor Christine Todd Whitman, a Republican, endorsed Biden in 2020. After launching a third party in 2022, Whitman said he’s now ready to go all out for Harris.
“It’s a completely different race, and the idea of prosecutors versus convicted felons is very attractive advertising-wise,” Whitman said.
Others find much to embrace about California’s former top cop.
“I liked his line: ‘I’m a prosecutor. I know how to deal with people like Donald Trump,” said former Connecticut Rep. Christopher Shays, a Trump critic. “He didn’t say that Donald Trump is a hateful, vile person – ugly. He was not needed.”
Shays said that after meeting with Biden, he decided not to vote for him, even though he believed he did a good job. He worried that Trump might increase his support after the failed assassination attempt, but now he thinks efforts to moderate him are quickly waning. In Harris, he sees a way forward.
“I love everything he’s ever done,” Shays said. “He doesn’t speak for an hour and a half, he nails it. We will not return.”
After the president announced Sunday that he would step aside, Harris worked the phones to win over key Democrats as his team worked to sway Biden’s delegates. Then he stepped into the spotlight, decades Trump’s junior, brushing off the former president’s jabs and urging him to negotiate the terms he agreed with Biden.
Sometimes the response borders on glee.
“The Republicans have had a really successful five weeks. It ended on Sunday,” said Rick Wilson, a longtime Republican strategist and co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project. “They don’t have a Plan B: Their campaign is built on young and old, and Harris automatically walks in the door with a huge strategic advantage in that respect.”
Harris may also receive support from Trump.
“He’s going to have a lot going for him,” Wilson said. “The basis of this competition has not changed. The bottom line is, “This is a referendum on Donald Trump.”
According to Wilson, the new ad campaign by Republican Voters Against Trump, aimed at conservative-leaning voters, focuses on the former president, emphasizing his actions on Jan. 6, court cases, threats of retaliation against enemies and voters. He is worried about leaving NATO.
That’s $500,000 pitch The anti-Trump vote is not a boost for Harris, but against Trump, which is part of an effort to mobilize what John Conway, director of strategy for the group Republican Voters Against Donald Trump, called the largest coalition in US politics. .
That wasn’t always the case for Harris, who faces Biden and more than a dozen other Democrats in 2020 as the party moves leftward.
“Going into the Democratic primary in 2020 at the height of a racial reckoning, his background as a former prosecutor, I think, hurt him,” Conway said. “In 2024, the country is in the mood for a candidate with a background who can insult Donald Trump.”
First, Harris must introduce himself and appease moderates in the process, Republicans watching him said. While Conway, Whitman and Shays all plan to vote for Harris, others may need more to come on board.
And there are potential pitfalls that await him. Shays said he was concerned about the pace of migration across the southern border, which the vice president was tasked with curbing soon after taking office. Instead, the numbers piled up and Harris went on the defensive, challenging his team for the title of “border king,” which he says was never the plan. Regardless, Harris can’t let go of his concerns if he wants the top job, Shays and others said.
“Immigration is a commitment,” Shays said. “That’s the only problem he has.” She said she hoped he would address the issue “head on” and use common sense.
Asked by reporters about the “prosecutor vs. crime” message, Trump campaign spokesman Stephen Cheung quickly dismissed it. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Kamala Harris is soft on crime.”
Harris’ candidacy could also be a factor for some Republicans who would be swayed by Trump.
“She should choose a moderate,” said Amanda Stewart Sprowls, a former supporter of Nikki Haley of Maricopa County, Arizona.
He said Biden’s candidacy offers him a candidate he can get behind in 2020, and he’s running for it again. Stewart Sprowls said women she knows might even consider Trump if he chose someone other than JD Vance, whom he views as an extremist on women’s issues.
“If Trump had picked a moderate, it would have been in the game,” he said.
Now Stewart Sprowls and others like him are looking to Harris and his vice presidential pick to offer a more balanced ticket.
“I’m definitely a Republican, but I can’t vote for Trump,” he said. “We just want normal.”
Whitman is clear about the challenge of appeasing voters who may have reservations about Harris’ liberal record and positions. “It’s going to be tough,” Whitman said. “A lot will depend on who he chooses as vice president. Even if it is not on the left side, that is how it will be drawn and it will be accepted as such.”
A “solid” vice presidential pick would save him time on defense and help deflect any criticism, Whitman added.