Vice President Kamala Harris is increasingly targeting a group of voters her campaign believes can make a critical difference in several key battlegrounds: Republicans and Republican-leaning independents who failed to support former President Donald Trump.
On Wednesday, Harris held an event with many of his leading Republican surrogates Bucks County, Pennsylvania – a key battleground state swing area. A day earlier in western Pennsylvania, his running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, held an event on the farm of a former Trump voter.
These events happened after a very heated rally in Wisconsin, where Harris was appeared next to him former Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., while Harris announced support he left office with her and her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney particularly low approval ratings. On Saturday, the Harris campaign announced a tour of battleground panels with the younger Cheney.
Believing these voters are underrepresented, the Harris campaign put them in the spotlight when it scheduled an interview with Fox News on Wednesday ahead of an event with Republican supporters.
This voting block also played a big role in the thinking behind it position of his bipartisan policy council He has pledged to elect a Republican to the White House and Cabinet, and has also distanced himself from the left-wing positions he espoused during the 2020 Democratic presidential primary.
“Unlike Donald Trump, who, frankly, as we’ve seen, is more interested in solving problems than solving problems, I want to solve problems, and that means working across the aisle,” Harris said at a Bucks County rally on Wednesday. “It requires working in the corridor. It requires accepting good ideas, no matter where they come from.”
From anti-Trump Republicans to Trump skeptics, there’s reason to think the group has grown since the 2020 election. First, there was the attack on the Capitol on January 6, in which a number of Republicans broke away from Trump, including some in his own staff. Then there was a significant outvote against Trump in this year’s GOP primaries after his rivals, former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley, ended their campaigns. But pro-Harris Republicans still acknowledge that winning those voters over is an uphill battle in the coming weeks.
“When they’re personal, it looks easy,” said Geoff Duncan, a former Georgia lieutenant governor who appeared alongside Harris in Pennsylvania and has been angry with Trump since the 2020 election. “When they’re in a public environment, it doesn’t seem like an easy task.”
“There is peer pressure in politics,” he said. “It’s a real thing, and that’s why a lot of Republicans don’t want to say it publicly [their support]and I think that’s what’s driving the density of inquiries we’re seeing. I think there is a whispering group that will do something different [at the ballot box] more than they signaled.”
Trump’s Pennsylvania spokesman, Kush Desai, said Republican Harris’ rally in Bucks County was “removed from relevance” and “theatrical support.” The Trump campaign sees this increased effort as a distraction from the bigger issues facing the Harris campaign — especially with the support of young black men in places like Philadelphia and Detroit where the Harris campaign is based. race to shore.
“They’re spending a lot of money in areas that they should already be locking down,” said a senior adviser to the Trump campaign. “It’s not the first time Liz Cheney has been used as a decoy.”
Any losses Trump faces among these disgruntled Republicans, the Trump campaign believes, will be more than offset by a boost in support among traditional Democratic voting blocs, including union workers and blacks, as well as low-leaning voters who have shown Trump’s favor in polls.
Trump campaign spokeswoman Carolyn Leavitt said: “He spends more time consolidating his base than reaching independent voters.” “President Trump is on full offense, polling better than ever, leading in battleground states and making historic gains with new voters.”
Another Trump campaign official pointed to the former president holding events in traditional Democratic strongholds, including the Bronx and Coachella, Calif., to bolster his case for growing the GOP tent.
“Our coalition has completely deviated from traditional Republicans,” a Trump campaign official told former independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, noted as “more recognizable adults.” “Or at least more appropriate than Liz Cheney.”
“Insurance Police”
The poll offers a mixed outlook for Harris’ draw with Trump-skeptic Republicans. In October, an NBC News poll showed him winning more than 6% of GOP support nationally at the same level This is an exit poll It showed President Joe Biden winning in 2020 October New York Times/Siena College the poll showed Harris’ support among Republicans at 9%, trailing Trump’s 3% support among Democrats in the poll by a margin of error of 2.4 percentage points. Same survey in October 2020 It found Biden’s GOP support at 7%.
The Harris campaign sees not only Jan. 6, but also the fact that several prominent former Trump administration officials, including former Vice President Mike Pence, have deemed him unfit to be president as key to their message to these voters. Harris campaign It recently launched a TV commercial that explains Trump as “unstable” — a message Harris himself used on the trail and in interviews.
They also see it as a key to pitching to undecided Latino voters, like the construction worker who asked Trump. during a Univision town hall This week on the January 6 attack and the administration officials who opposed it.
“We didn’t have guns,” Trump said as part of his response, linking himself to the rioters and wrong it doesn’t mean any they were armed. “Others had guns, but we didn’t. When I say “we”, these are the people who went down – it was a small percentage of the total that no one saw and no one, no one showed. But this was a day of love.”
Others say they worry that Jan. 6 won’t have as much of an impact on those voters as the Harris campaign hopes.
Jane Andersen, an anti-Trump conservative in Arizona and a member of Mormon Women for Ethical Government, told NBC News: “I’m hearing more about taxes and kitchen table issues and immigration coming to the surface.” “And so, I honestly don’t know which way our state will go. As for January 6, I am concerned that our memory is really short.
But there is another point that pro-Harris Republicans say makes their position a little easier: the possibility that Republicans will take control of the Senate this fall. For voters worried that Harris would shift policy further to the left, these Republicans said it allows them to keep a check on Trump while warning about his unchecked potential.
“When this election is over, there will be a lot of Republicans in Congress,” former Rep. Jim Greenwood, who led the Republican state chapter for Harris, said of his pitch to skeptical Republicans. “Kamala Harris will need and has expressed her desire to continually cross the aisle and resolve issues bipartisanly.”
Both Greenwood and Duncan said Harris’ move away from the fracking ban made it easier to push Republicans, adding Duncan’s move away from universal health care and that the Green New Deal was “good enough for me to get going.” [conservative] crowd.”
Duncan also said the prospect of GOP control of the Senate eased some concerns.
“It’s very likely that there will be checks and balances in Congress,” Duncan said. “It’s an insurance policy against a runaway idea that doesn’t fit their conservative approach. I’ve heard it referred to in many Republican circles as an insurance policy against the runaway policy train.”
The Harris campaign insists its focus on Republicans is not new, pointing to the seven-figure investments Biden has made since he was in the race. And the campaign says it’s ignoring other groups to focus on Republicans, pointing to it Proliferation of policies targeting black men this week. It also pushed back the idea that he was watering down his policy agenda to appeal to these voters.
But the upside is evident here, with key surrogates lining up events in recent weeks in hopes of maximizing impact.
During an interview with Fox News on Wednesday, Harris said he would invite input from Republicans when asked what he would do differently than Biden, whom he replaced on the ticket this summer.
“There are a lot of independents and Haley-type Republicans who are very open to voting for VP Harris, and that’s why we’re open to events with Republicans and Fox News,” communications director Brian Fallon told reporters afterward.
‘They are very important’
Nowhere is the struggle for these voters more evident than in Pennsylvania. Before the events there this week Harris’ team wrote a memo It details how the plan to win the most critical battleground is to increase vote share in suburban areas with educated women and shave Trump’s edge in red counties, including the roughly 160,000 Pennsylvania Republicans who voted for Haley. in the state’s closed party primary earlier this year.
“They are very important,” said a Harris campaign official in the Keystone State. “And it’s not just limited to the suburbs, it’s more rural areas where there are people who are fed up with Trump, who want someone like Nikki Haley to replace him and they can’t get it because it’s Trump’s party now.”
The person said they believed the polls “underestimated” support among Republicans, pointing to Democrats Governor Josh Shapiro and Senator John Fetterman which is exceeded their pre-election One-day voting with Republicans in the state in 2022.
The October Pennsylvania poll Philadelphia Inquirer/New York Times/Siena College Harris has the support of 7% of Pennsylvania Republicans — a lower total than exit polls showed Shapiro and Fetterman winning in 2022. The poll had a margin of error of 3.9 percentage points and showed Trump winning the support of 5% of state Democrats.
To that end, some Pennsylvania Democrats see value in telling voters where they align with Trump. Senator Bob Casey was released An ad showing support for Trump’s trade policies in his critical race against Republican Dave McCormick. And the Trump team believes its secret weapon in any battle for Haley voters is Haley’s own endorsement of Trump.
On Friday, two people familiar with the plan told NBC News that the Trump campaign was in talks with Haley to host a joint event. A spokesman for Haley did not respond to a request for comment.
A Trump campaign official said: “When you’ve got Nikki Haley, who voted and supported President Trump, I think that’s a bigger and more powerful influence than anything Liz Cheney has said or done.”
But Greenwood said Haley’s endorsement doesn’t matter much to him, not only because he’s cool at best, but also because he believes his voters are more interested in challenging Trump than positively supporting the former South Carolina governor.
“He was basically the only Republican alternative,” he said.
For Duncan, he said the most important battle he’s fighting for these voters is against voter apathy.
“The votes I’m converting are mostly not Trump votes for Harris,” he said. “They’re from the couch to Harris. “A lot of Republicans need that little extra nudge.”