The vice president’s campaign has been boosted by the recent endorsement of former Representative Liz Cheney and the support of other Republicans opposed to Donald Trump, developments that his team believes reinforce his attempt to win over more Republican voters in battleground states than previous Democrats.
To highlight that momentum, Harris will appear Wednesday with Adam Kinzinger, a former Republican congressman from Illinois who will be one of about 100 Republicans at the event, including a half-dozen former House members and former Trump aides. The event will be held at Washington Crossing in the key state of Pennsylvania, where disaffected Republicans and independents are bidding to tip what polls show as a very close race.
The Democratic candidate will also have her first formal interview with Fox News on Wednesday, a 20-minute session with chief political host Bret Baier, in a risky attempt to take his message directly to conservative voters.
Harris’s advisers and allies say the ranks of right-leaning voters determined to prevent Trump from returning to power have grown significantly since the last election.
Many are motivated by his refusal to accept his 2020 election defeat and his repeated promises to dismantle democratic institutions. A smaller number, Harris allies say, They are drawn to the vice president because they want to help elect the first woman president or support her positions on the economy, abortion, or other issues.
Jeff Timmer, chief operating officer of the Lincoln Project, a political action committee founded by conservatives who oppose Trump, says fewer than 100,000 anti-Trump Republican voters in battleground states could make a significant difference. If they decide not to vote, “they would be helping Trump,” he added.
Nine percent of likely Republican voters said they planned to support Harris in a New York Times/Siena College poll conducted last week, compared to 5% the previous month.
“Kamala Harris can surprise at the end of the day with pure Republicans or independents who are essentially Republicans,” said David Plouffe, a former campaign adviser to former President Barack Obama and now a senior adviser to Harris, in a recent podcast.
Republicans who have endorsed the last two Democratic presidential candidates say Harris’ campaign has made a more concerted effort to appeal to center-right voters than Joe Biden’s or Hillary Clinton’s operations. Endorsement from high-profile GOP figures such as Liz Cheney and Dick Cheney has helped.
“It’s creating a permitting structure where more and more Republicans are saying, ‘Enough is enough, we don’t want this for our country,’” said Olivia Troye, who has been traveling to battlegrounds as a member of Republicans for Harris.
Trump has called Harris an extreme liberal, a characterization she has tried to counter by promising to work with businesses to grow the economy. and promising to include a Republican in his Cabinet and form a bipartisan policy advisory council.
Vice Presidential candidate Tim Walz has also appeared on “Fox News Sunday” for the past two weeks, and the campaign is regularly hiring supporters and employees at the network.
Republican pollster Frank Luntz He said Harris’ campaign is making a miscalculation by emphasizing the threats Trump could pose to democracy.ay should focus instead on the economy.
In focus groups, he found that persuadable Republican voters who often live in the suburbs of cities in key states “personally don’t like Trump,” but they fear that Harris’ policies could affect their pockets.
In a fragmented media environment, these high-income voters don’t fully understand his proposals, and Luntz doesn’t think an interview like the one on Fox News will help. “It’s not social conservatives, it’s not people who watch Fox News,” Luntz said.
However, anti-Trump Republicans They believe their defense of democracy will be enough to win over tens of thousands of Republican voters in every battleground state.
Craig Snyder, former chief of staff to the late Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, He was an early member of the Never Trump movement and said more of his fellow Republicans have adopted his position.
“If I had told you a few years ago that there would be a candidate (forget who it would be), but there would be a candidate who would have the enthusiastic support of both Dick Cheney and Bernie Sanders, You would have thought it was crazy, right?”Snyder said.
