Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign is picking up the Republican endorsement in Wisconsin, a key state that has played a key role in wooing voters skeptical of Donald Trump.
Last week, Harris won the public endorsement of the outgoing Republican state senator Robert ColesThe longest serving member of the Senate and Shawn Reillythe former Republican mayor of Waukesha, one of the state’s biggest GOP strongholds.
The battleground state, where elections are regularly decided by razor-thin margins, is a top priority for both campaigns, where Harris, Trump and their running mates will make stops in the final week of the presidential race.
In addition to Harris’ two endorsements that drew national attention, several other local Republicans, from former sheriffs to members of the Legislature, have endorsed Harris in recent weeks. The wave began in earnest last month, when former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, a longtime mainstay of national Republican politics and now a fierce Trump critic, endorsed Harris at an event in Wisconsin, where she has now gone with him twice. .
“I was a Republican before Donald Trump started tanning” Cheney joked during his first visit to Ripon last month. “I’m telling you, I’ve never voted Democrat, but this year I’m proudly voting for Vice President Kamala Harris.”
Ripon in Fond du Lac County is known as the birthplace of the Republican Party in 1854. He and Cheney’s other event this month in Waukesha County has a more modern twist: Both places are home to large pockets of voters. The GOP ran against Trump in the presidential election.
The Cheney events were held in the two counties as part of Harris’ broader campaign strategy to target suburban voters, where former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, Trump’s last permanent Republican challenger this year, did well in the primary. These efforts also spread to other swing states North Carolina and Pennsylvania.
“Our Republicans for Harris program takes this unifying, inspiring message to anti-Trump Republicans, moderates and independents,” said Austin Weatherford, national engagement director for the Republican Harris campaign. “We know these are the votes we need to win, and we continue to work every day to engage the millions of Republicans who are ready to turn Donald Trump’s page on chaos, extremism and division.”
The Wisconsin effort is co-chaired by Tracy Ann Mangold, a longtime Republican activist in the state who said she stands by the U.S. Constitution against any political party.
“It was strange. The Republican Party used to be a big tent party; now they are Democrats,” he said. “I’m a very strong man for the Constitution, and when there’s a party that denigrates the Constitution and a person that denigrates our Constitution, they don’t belong in the Oval Office.”
Mangold’s group worked directly with the Harris campaign to find additional Republicans who could openly support Harris, to try to knock on the doors of Republicans who could be persuaded to work with him, and to hold large phone banking events to reach out to potential swing voters.
“I’ve been hosting phone banks every Tuesday and emailing people we think will be Harris voters,” she said.
Trump’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment. When Cheney first visited the state, he called it “out of touch” in a statement.
“Another incompetent Harris administration is the last thing Wisconsinites want or need, regardless of what Liz Cheney thinks,” campaign spokesman Stephen Cheung said in a statement.
Several other Wisconsin Republicans have joined the effort to support Harris in recent weeks, including former state Assemblywoman Sheehan Donoghue and former Iowa County Sheriff Steve Michek.
In Wisconsin, there has been a concerted effort for Harris-aligned investigative groups to knock on doors and reach out directly to Republicans or conservative-leaning independents. The purpose of the messaging in this interaction is to focus on what they see as Trump’s more extreme views.
“We hear a lot about Jan. 6, Donald Trump’s extremism, protecting our institutions, those kinds of things,” Harris’ Wisconsin press secretary, Timothy White, said of the issues that come up when credulous Republicans knock on doors. independents.
Reilly’s endorsement in particular made huge waves and was seen as a major victory for Harris. Waukesha County, home to the city of the same name he presides over, is the largest Republican county in the state and is part of a three-county bloc in the Milwaukee suburbs with Ozaukee and Washington, the engine of Republican activism. in past elections.
Three so-called “WOW” counties gave Trump 15% of all votes in 2020 in a state with 72 counties.
“It’s a vote against Trump,” Reilly This was reported to WITI-TV of Milwaukee. “I fear Donald Trump as our next president for all the reasons I’ve mentioned: He’s already been impeached twice.
“He has been convicted of serious crimes and the United States does not need that,” he said.