big-name Republican endorser of Vice President Kamala Harris is testing how many disaffected GOP voters she will capture in her race against polarizing former President Donald Trump.
Former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, a member of pre-Trump GOP royalty, became the latest and most prominent Republican to endorse Harris on Wednesday. Harris also has endorsements from former Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., and hundreds of local Republican officials to try to puncture what his campaign campaign is Trump’s soft underbelly with Republican voters who are uncomfortable with the former president’s brash and unorthodox brand of politics. .
The campaign’s consistent outreach is just one part of Harris’ overall path to Election Day, but now, with no bigger names left on the table for support, the vice president will know if there’s more support from disgruntled Republicans — or if he is maxed out.
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“The support of Kinzinger/Cheney was designed by Democrats to make Republican voters who are divided by Trump’s dishonesty, bad character, felony convictions, ignorance of public policy, etc., better not just reject but actively express their displeasure by voting for Harris ,” said former Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Ala., a six-term conservative lawmaker who clashed with Trump in the 2022 Senate race.
“The number of Republican voters converted by Republicans who endorse Harris is relatively small,” he said. “But in a close race, it can be the difference between winning and losing.”
Cheney, a rising star in the GOP yesteryear who became both an outcast and the face of the anti-Trump Republican flank after the January 6 insurrection, said Wednesday in red-leaning North Carolina that he would back Harris out of fear for American democracy. On Friday, he said his father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, would do the same.
“I think it’s a very important discussion for the first time in North Carolina, where, you know, one of the questions I heard from Republicans who know they’re not going to support Donald Trump anymore, but you know. , have said, I hope I will write anyone,” he said on Friday. “And I think, especially if we are talking about a country that knows that it will be close, where the election will be decided, we do not have that luxury and I think it is very important to understand the nature of the choice that we have,” he said.
The endorsement is just one part of Harris’ strategy to win over Republican voters sitting on the fence.
The party sees an opening for expansion with renegade Republicans, especially after hundreds of thousands of voters ditched Trump in the GOP primary in favor of former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, including after she ended her campaign. And Trump has shown little appetite for those who oppose him, saying at a town hall Thursday, “I don’t want those people” when asked about people who didn’t vote for him in the primary.
Democrats had a parade of Republican speakers, including Kinzinger, speak at last month’s convention. Harris said he would appoint a Republican to his cabinet. A network of local officials and former Trump administration officials has been working hard for Harris. And the campaign has spent millions of dollars in advertising to suggest to Republicans that they have a place in the modern Democratic Party.
Of course, Harris does not put the people who convert Republicans at the core of his strategy, recognizing the limited opportunities that challenge the GOP especially in the thrall of Trump. But Democrats insist that winning over a sliver of protest voters could pay dividends — and big names like Cheney and Kinzinger could provide the structure for some Republicans to punch their ticket for Democrats this November.
“We know that there are some Republicans who are in the same situation. They’ve never been Trump, of course. Some may be, but they don’t know how they feel about Vice President Harris,” said Democratic strategist Karen Finney. . “This endorsement sends a signal to voters that there is someone else who has a high profile, but who thinks like Trump and has the same concerns, and who they respect.”
It is not clear exactly how Cheney will go out on the trail of converting Republicans, but there is already a playbook on how he can throw his weight around.
In 2022, he put $500,000 into an Arizona ad that defeated Kari Lake and Mark Finchem, the Republican candidate for governor and secretary of state and vocal election rejection, saying that “I don’t know if I’ve ever voted for a Democrat, but if I live in Arizona , I certainly will.
Lake and Finchem continued to lose races.
But the statewide race in the midterm year is not the same as the historical presidential election with the Republican candidate sucking an unparalleled amount of political oxygen.
Polls show Harris stuck in the single digits with support among Republicans, and Trump has been a public figure for years, including nearly 10 since launching his first campaign, making perceptions of him strong enough to hold off on new endorsements.
“My instinct is that the (Republicans) and (independents) are not moved — they’ve signed on with Harris,” said Chuck Coughlin, an Arizona strategist who left the GOP in the Trump era.
“Anyone who has voted against Trump because they hate Trump has been there, GOP pollster Robert Blizzard agrees.
Other Republicans said voters could not be persuaded by Cheney and Kinzinger’s dire warning about the threat Trump posed to democracy given that, despite the three-year attack on January 6 in the US Capitol by a pro-Trump mob, the guardrails were held.
“I Kinzinger and Cheney are not the most persuasive for fence sitting or ‘Haley’ Voters. They usually do not accept the apocalyptic framing they use that Democracy ends with Trump. I think the most persuasive are those who work with them like (Jon) Kelly, (Mark) Esper, (Henry) McMaster, (John) Bolton and others who can say they’re working with him and he’s not a good fit,” GOP anti-Trump strategist Rob Stutzman said, referring to former Trump administration officials with national security backgrounds.
And all the work and money Harris has put into attracting Republicans, some operatives speculated that the vice president’s ceiling in GOP support may have been met.
“Of course it helps. But I’m not sure the endorsements are leading indicators of the movement Don’t Trump, instead they seem to be more lagging indicators of the movement,” said the former Florida Rep. David Jolly, who left the GOP over disagreements with. Trump. “The real catalyst for a strengthening coalition is Harris himself.”
The Trump campaign, for its part, appears unconcerned about Cheney’s recent endorsement.
When asked what the campaign thought of Cheney announcing she and her father would vote for Harris, campaign spokesman Steven Cheung replied, “who is Liz Cheney?”
ABC News’ Isabella Murray contributed to this report.