Vice President Kamala Harris teamed up with former Rep. Liz Cheney on Monday in an aggressive bid to win over centrist Republicans who are on the fence about voting for former President Donald Trump in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.
The Harris campaign held moderated conversations in an effort to court centrists in the suburbs in battlegrounds that delivered Trump victory in 2016 but swung back for President Joe Biden in 2020.
Harris is stumping alongside Cheney in an effort to win over voters who might have backed former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, who had a base of supporters who were centrist and college-educated.
The former Wyoming congresswoman who is the daughter of Vice President Dick Cheney was exiled from the GOP after participating in a congressional investigation of Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
She previously was in Republican leadership in the House before supporting Trump’s second impeachment. She was eventually booted from leadership and defeated by a Trump-backed challenger in a GOP primary for her seat. Cheney called the choice between Harris and Trump, specifically on foreign policy, “absolutely clear.”
“Our adversaries know they can play Donald Trump,” Cheney said. “They absolutely know they can play him, and we simply can’t afford to take that risk.”
Cheney, speaking at the event in Malvern, Pennsylvania, a Philadelphia suburb, asked women there who oppose abortion to put their feelings on the topic aside and suggested that Republican restrictions on abortion had gone too far following the 2022 Supreme Court ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that there is no constitutional right to abortion.
“I think there are many of us around the country who have been pro-life but who have watched what is going on in states since the Dobbs decision and have watched state legislatures put in place laws that are resulting in women not getting the care they need,” Cheney said. “In places like Texas, for example, the attorney general is talking about suing, is suing to get access to women’s medical records. That’s not sustainable for us as a country, and it has to change.”
As Trump and Republicans attempt to paint Harris as a “radical liberal,” she struck a moderate tone during her appearances on Monday, promising to “invite good ideas from wherever they come.”
“We are traveling to three states to talk to all Americans about what is at stake in this election, but doing it through the lens of a very important point — that what is at stake in this election is so fundamental that it does really cross partisan lines,” Harris said to reporters ahead of her second event in Michigan on Monday.
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At an event in Royal Oak, Michigan, outside of Detroit, Cheney asked voters to vote their conscience and that they do “not ever have to say a word to anybody.”
Cheney explained she had been spending time getting to know Harris and explained this would be the first time she is voting for a Democrat.
“When I look at the nature of the threat Donald Trump poses — look, Donald Trump is doing everything he can to get people to forget about what he did … that level of instability, misogyny, that is someone you cannot entrust to the Oval Office,” Cheney said.
Trump attacked Cheney on social media on Monday, accusing her of being a “war hawk” and calling her “dumb as a rock.”
Harris’s bipartisan pursuit of support comes as some Democrats have grown concerned about Harris’s support among working-class voters in the Midwest.
The vice president has not received the same level of support as President Joe Biden among organized labor. The International Brotherhood of Teamsters declined to back either candidate, as did the International Association of Fire Fighters. Both endorsed Biden four years ago.
Democrats want Harris to focus on appealing to blue-collar workers and strike a more populist tone.
“I think it’s a real possibility we are losing some of these voters to Trump and it’s critical Harris speak about the work the administration has already done to benefit these workers,” said a Democratic strategist based in Pennsylvania, who asked not to be named in an effort to speak candidly about the race.
“She needs to be talking about the CHIPS Act, the administration’s work to grow the auto industry and other things they’ve done,” the person said, referencing the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act, which provided major new subsides for the domestic manufacturing of advanced computer chips and other key technologies. “Sometimes the threat to democracy message doesn’t resonate with these people.”
In the latest New York Times-Siena College poll, 70% of black men likely to vote said they would opt for Harris, while 20% said they would back Trump. Those numbers illustrate a 15-point difference from 2020, when 85% of black men answered they planned to support Biden.
Republicans continue to point out Harris’s previous positions on electric vehicles and fracking in these critical states. Former Michigan GOP chair Saul Anuzis said Trump’s messaging is clearly resonating with voters part of the “blue wall” that propelled Biden to victory last cycle.
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“Trump traditionally has been a candidate that has appealed to a kind of working class, blue collar, culturally conservative voter who doesn’t like either political party. They just want to shake things up,” Anuzis said, speaking with the Washington Examiner.
“They see Trump as a big disrupter, where Kamala Harris was kind of the quintessential establishment person who, you know, obviously got, you know, anointed for the nomination,” he added.