Both Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are leaning into Wisconsin’s beloved sports teams in the hope that their support will boost their campaigns.
Both campaigns are using well-known sports figures from Wisconsin-based teams to boost them in a move neither campaign has fully tried in other states. Both Trump and Harris are set to campaign in Wisconsin on this week.
Trump is set to campaign with former Green Bay Packers quarterback Brett Favre at a rally in the city suburb of Ashwaubenon, Wisconsin, on Wednesday. Favre played in the NFL for 20 years, mostly with the Packers, where he led the team to 11 playoff runs and two Super Bowl appearances.
Favre has voiced his support for the former president in recent years, similarly endorsing him in 2020. He and Trump went golfing together in 2022 at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey.
Thank you, @BrettFavre! https://t.co/MqqlFnKjSR
— Team Trump (Text TRUMP to 88022) (@TeamTrump) October 30, 2020
If you’re born in the USA or an American citizen and you put other countries above us, then that’s unpatriotic. That’s it.
— Brett Favre (@BrettFavre) September 16, 2024
Favre recently announced he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease at a congressional committee meeting focused on the misuse of federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families funds in Mississippi. He is connected with the Mississippi welfare scandal involving the misappropriation of roughly $77 million in state funds, but Favre has not been criminally charged and denies any wrongdoing. Trump’s former attorney, Eric Herschmann, represented him in the civil suit.
The Harris campaign will campaign with Milwaukee Bucks head coach Doc Rivers, an NBA All-Star who was named one of the top 15 coaches in the league’s history. Rivers was named co-chair of “Athletes for Harris” alongside NBA legend Magic Johnson. He recently campaigned with second gentleman Doug Emhoff for Harris in Wisconsin.
Rivers is featured in a new ad that will play in the Milwaukee TV market and highlight Trump’s comments calling Milwaukee a “horrible” city, the Harris campaign announced Sunday.
The ad will also highlight the “empty promises” of Trump’s Foxconn deal.
“In this town, we’ve seen our share of hard times, heard our share of big promises,” Rivers, who is not seen in the ad, said in a voiceover. “But empty promises don’t build cities. We do — with grit, sweat, and cold beer.”
Foxconn was a contracted manufacturing facility set to be built 30 miles south of Milwaukee, and Wisconsin was set to provide the firm with nearly $3 billion in tax credits if it created 13,000 jobs at the factory. But the deal never came to fruition as the plant was never built. At the Democratic National Convention, an ad also played to hit Trump over his administration’s unfulfilled promises of Foxconn.
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President Joe Biden recently visited the deserted site to announce that Microsoft would take over the property, painting the Microsoft development as a “comeback story” playing out across Wisconsin and the nation and calling Trump’s Foxconn deal “a con.”
Harris will hold a “Get out the Vote” rally in Madison, Wisconsin, on Wednesday on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus featuring musical artists Gracie Abrams and Mumford and Sons.