WASHINGTON — The surge of excitement around Kamala Harris has locked in powerful interest groups and unions, cemented titans of Wall Street and Hollywood, and captured “coconut-pilled” progressives and Joe Biden campaign aides alike.
But Harris’ rapid ascent to the top of the Democratic ticket is also animating another important coalition of voters: former Republicans more desperate than ever to turn the page on Donald Trump.
Biden, with a decadeslong record in office, had offered them a moderate who promised to court compromise in Washington. Now, those anti-Trump Republicans are measuring up Harris, trying to determine whether she, too, can appeal to the center with her own policy proposals and with her pick for a running mate.
Already, Harris has notched Republican support from former Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan.
Former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, a Republican, endorsed Biden in 2020. After launching a third party in 2022, Whitman said she is now all in for Harris.
“It’s a totally different race, and the idea of a prosecutor against a convicted felon is a very appealing one from an ad point of view,” Whitman said.
Others, too, are finding plenty to embrace about California’s former top cop.
“I loved her line: ‘I’m a prosecutor. I know how to deal with people like Donald Trump,’” said former Rep. Christopher Shays, a Republican critic of Trump from Connecticut. “She didn’t say Donald Trump’s a hateful, despicable man — ugly. She didn’t have to.”
Shays said that after meeting Biden, he decided he would not vote for him despite believing he had done a good job. He worried Trump might be able to increase his support after the failed assassination attempt but now thinks the effort to moderate him has quickly fallen away. In Harris, he sees a path forward.
“I just love everything she’s done so far,” Shays said. “She doesn’t speak for an hour and a half, and she nails it. We’re not going back.”
After the president’s announcement Sunday that he would step aside, Harris worked the phones to win over key Democrats as her team worked on swaying Biden’s delegates. Then, she burst into the spotlight, decades Trump’s junior, flicking away the former president’s jabs and challenging him to debate on the terms he had agreed to with Biden.
At times, the response has bordered on gleeful.
“Republicans have had five weeks of really good luck. That 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 framed around young versus old, and Harris automatically walks in the door with a huge strategic advantage in that regard.”
Harris may also get a boost from Trump.
“He’s going to do a lot of the work for her,” Wilson said. “The fundamental of this race has not changed. The fundamental is still, ‘This is a referendum on Donald Trump.’”
To Wilson’s point, a new advertising campaign targeting conservative-leaning swing voters by the group Republican Voters Against Trump trains its spotlight squarely on the former president, highlighting his actions on Jan. 6, court cases, threats of retribution against enemies, and voters’ worries he would pull out of NATO.
This $500,000 pitch from anti-Trump voters isn’t so much a push for Harris as it is against Trump, part of an effort to mobilize what John Conway, the director of strategy for the group Republican Voters Against Donald Trump, calls the largest coalition in U.S. politics.
It wasn’t always this way for Harris, who, in 2020, faced off against Biden and more than a dozen other Democrats as the party lurched to the left.
“Running in a Democratic primary at the height of the racial reckoning in 2020, her background as a former prosecutor, I think, hurt her,” said Conway. “In 2024, the country is in the mood for a candidate that has her background and can go on offense against Donald Trump.”
First, Harris has to reintroduce herself and, in the process, reassure moderates, Republicans looking to her 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 awaiting her. Shays said he remains concerned about the rate of migration across the southern border, a swell that the vice president was tasked with curbing soon after taking office. Instead, numbers have skyrocketed, and Harris has been on defense, fighting back against the title of “border czar” that her team said was never the plan. Regardless, if Harris wants the top job, she can’t wave off the concerns, Shays and others said.
“Immigration is a liability,” said Shays. “It’s the one challenge she has.” He said he hopes she tackles the issue head-on “and pursues common sense.”
Asked by reporters about the “prosecutor vs. felon” message, Steven Cheung, a spokesman for the Trump campaign, quickly dismissed it. “Doesn’t matter,” he said. “Kamala Harris is soft on crime.”
Harris’ pick for a running mate could also be a factor for some Republicans who might be swayed from Trump.
“She’s got to pick a moderate,” said Amanda Stewart Sprowls, a former Nikki Haley supporter from Maricopa County, Arizona, who identifies as a “pro-choice moderate.”
She said Biden’s candidacy offered her a candidate whom she could get behind in 2020, and she is eager for this again. Stewart Sprowls said women she knows may have even considered Trump had he picked someone other than JD Vance, whom she perceives as an extremist on women’s issues.
“If Trump had picked a moderate, this would have been in play,” she said.
Now Stewart Sprowls and others like her are looking to Harris and her vice presidential pick to offer a more balanced ticket.
“I am definitely a Republican, but I cannot vote for Trump,” she said. “We just want normal.”
Whitman is clear-eyed about the challenge of putting at ease voters who may have reservations about Harris’s liberal record and stances. “It’s going to be tough,” Whitman said. “A lot’s going to depend on who she picks as vice president. Even though she’s not way-left, that’s how they’re going to paint her, and that’s how she’s going to be perceived.”
A “solid” vice presidential pick will save her from spending time on defense, helping to deflect any criticism, Whitman added.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
