The Harris campaign on Sunday laid out its plan to win over Republican voters in an effort to mobilize voters in swing states who voted for former Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley — but the effort is not without its obstacles, according to a source familiar with the campaign’s Republican outreach efforts.
The campaign is hiring state political directors to lead Republican outreach in their regions, the source told NBC News. However, the source said the campaign is having difficulty gaining support from certain state leadership teams to lead GOP outreach.
“That’s their dream, but I don’t think it’s going to happen at the level they want,” the person said.
The source is nervous about getting Republicans to support Harris because of some of her policy positions during the 2020 Democratic primaries, such as her co-sponsorship of the Green New Deal and her support for mandatory gun buyback programs. But her change of stance on some of these political issues reassured the person.
The campaign on Sunday announced a new effort to woo GOP voters that includes creating state advisory committees in swing states that the campaign says will “play a key role in facilitating contact among Republican voters,” such as tapping doors, telephone banking and holding events with Republicans. As part of Sunday’s announcement, Harris’ campaign said it will launch a digital campaign where Republican Harris supporters will present “their case online to other Republicans.”
During the 2020 election, the Biden-Harris campaign relied on independent groups, never Trump, to court Republican voters. This time, the 2024 campaign created a specific position to woo them, hiring Rep. Adam Kinzinger’s former chief of staff, Austin Weatherford, a few months ago.
“Donald Trump’s MAGA extremism is toxic to the millions of Republicans who no longer believe that Donald Trump’s party represents their values and will vote against him again in November,” Weatherford, national Republican outreach director for the Harris campaign, said in a statement. an announcement. “Donald Trump has said he doesn’t want these voters, but Vice President Harris and our campaign are working overtime to win the support of my Republican colleagues who care about defending democracy and restoring decency.”
The campaign also revealed a number of endorsements from Republicans, many of whom were already openly critical of former President Donald Trump, including former Gov. Bill Weld, R-Mass.; former Rep. Denver Riggleman, R-Va.; and former Trump administration press secretary Stephanie Grisham.
Republican surrogates will also join Harris at events during her election campaign in seven states this week, although the campaign has not specified which ones are scheduled to appear.
When the Harris campaign asked if there were prominent Republicans who could be courted to make an endorsement, the source said it was difficult to find people who would be willing to endorse the Democratic ticket in 2020, and they suspect it will be more difficult now. . This source believes that former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming will ultimately support Vice President Kamala Harris, although she was not included in Sunday’s rollout of campaign endorsements. The source also said they suggested that Harris’ campaign court the endorsement of former Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., who supported President Joe Biden in 2020.
Neither Cheney nor Flake had made an endorsement for 2024 before Biden was eliminated from the race.
If Cheney supported Harris, it would align her once again with former Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., the only Republican other than Cheney to serve on the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, and a fellow Trump critic .
“As a proud conservative, I never thought I would support a Democrat for president,” Kinzinger 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.”
Likewise, Grisham said in a statement that he “may not agree with Vice President Kamala Harris on everything, but I know she will fight for our freedom.”
“I encourage other Trump administration officials who saw the tyrant we worked for in office to speak out and support Kamala Harris this November to maintain integrity in the White House and ensure democracy in our country,” she continued.
The endorsements come as Trump’s campaign is working to paint Harris as “dangerously liberal,” a position the former president reiterated during his rally in Atlanta, Georgia, on Saturday when he called Harris a “radical left freak ”.
But Trump’s criticism did not dissuade the person familiar with the Republican Party’s reach from the Harris campaign, who previously worked in Republican politics.
“I really feel at peace doing everything we can to win it with Harris,” the source said. “I think defeating Trump is the best way to get to a healthy Republican Party.”
This story originally appeared on NBCNews.com read the full story
