Vice president’s campaign launches ‘Republicans for Harris’ to try to win over Republican voters turned off by Trump

WASHINGTON — Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign will launch “Republicans for Harris” on Sunday as she looks to win over Republican voters turned off by Donald Trump’s candidacy.

The program will be a “campaign within a campaign,” according to Harris’ team, using well-known Republicans to activate their networks, with a particular focus on primary voters who backed former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley. The program will kick off with events this week in Arizona, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. Republicans backing Harris will also appear at rallies with the vice president and her soon-to-be-named running mate next week, the campaign said.

Harris’ campaign shared details of the program first with The Associated Press before the official announcement.

Biden’s team is trying to create a “permission structure” for Republican voters who would otherwise have a hard time voting for Harris. The effort will rely heavily on outreach to Republican voters, with the belief that the best way to get a Republican to vote for Harris is to hear directly from another Republican making the same choice.

Trump’s extremism “is toxic to the millions of Republicans who no longer believe Donald Trump’s party represents their values” and will vote against him again in November, said Harris’ national Republican outreach director, Austin Weatherford. He said the campaign “will show up and take the time every day to earn the vote of Republicans who believe in putting country over party and know that every American deserves a president who protects their freedoms and a commander in chief who puts the best interests of the American people above his own.”

Weatherford was chief of staff to former Illinois Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger, who had endorsed the Biden-Harris ticket before President Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance against Trump. Kinzinger is endorsing Harris once again as part of the pitch.

“As a proud conservative, I never thought I would support a Democrat for president,” he said in a statement. “But I know that Vice President Harris will defend our democracy and ensure that Donald Trump never returns to the White House.”

Kinzinger rose to national prominence as one of two Republicans on the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. The committee highlighted a series of Trump transgressions before and during the deadly attack as Congress sought to certify the results of the 2020 election that Biden won over Trump.

Trump has done little to try to win over moderate Republican voters and on Saturday again criticized Georgia’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp, who rejected Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election in the battleground state.

Last month, when Biden was still the front-runner, the campaign released an ad highlighting former Trump staffers’ criticism of their former boss. Another ad highlighted Trump’s often personal attacks on Haley, including his mostly “knucklehead” nickname and the suggestion that “she’s not presidential material.”

Hundreds of thousands of registered Republicans voted for Haley in the primary even after she had ended her bid for the 2024 Republican nomination and Trump was defeating her in nearly every contest.

Haley announced in May that she would vote for Trump and appeared at last month’s Republican National Convention.

Harris’ campaign includes former Govs. Bill Weld of Massachusetts and Christine Todd Whitman of New Jersey, former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, former Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and 16 former Republican members of Congress, including Kinzinger and Reps. Joe Walsh of Illinois and Susan Molinari of New York. All have been prominent Trump critics in the past.

Former Trump press secretary Stephanie Grisham also endorses Harris.

“I may not agree with Vice President Kamala Harris on everything, but I know she will fight for our freedom, protect our democracy, and represent America with honor and dignity on the world stage,” Grisham said in a statement.