Harris taps Cheney for ‘blue wall’ tour as she courts undecided independents, moderate Republicans

(CNN) — Vice President Kamala Harris is making an aggressive bid to win over independents and moderate Republicans in the suburbs, visiting vote-rich counties in three Great Lakes swing states Monday with former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney.

In the presidential race’s closing days, Harris’ campaign is courting a small but potentially decisive group across what it sees as similar terrain in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — a trio of battleground states that tipped the 2016 race for Donald Trump but swung back in Democrats’ favor in 2020.

They’re the kinds of voters who might have backed former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, whose supporters in the 2024 Republican primary tended to be moderate and college-educated. And the push to reach them comes as Trump says he expects to deploy Haley in the race’s final stretch.

“I think it just goes to show they’re literally just scrapping for every vote,” said former Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a Republican who opposes Trump and spoke at a recent Harris rally in Pennsylvania. “It’s not just about turning out your base. There is a group in the middle that probably would support a regular Republican candidate and they’re trying to get their head around, can they vote for Trump? Or can they actually vote Democratic? I just think it’s neck-and-neck.”

The blitz of the “blue wall” states will see Harris and Cheney travel to suburban counties of Chester County, Pennsylvania; Oakland County, Michigan; and Waukesha County, Wisconsin. The conversations will be moderated by Bulwark publisher and Republican strategist Sarah Longwell, and Charlie Sykes, a conservative commentator who for decades shaped Wisconsin politics with his talk radio show before declaring in 2016 that the conservative movement had lost its way. Both support Harris. 

Those counties are all populous suburban targets where Democrats have significantly expanded their share of the vote in recent elections. The focus on those areas underscores where the Harris campaign believes it can find undecided and persuadable voters — including those who backed Haley in the 2024 Republican primary, according to a senior campaign official.

The events aren’t intended to focus on progressive policy pitches, but rather warnings about what a second Trump term could mean.

Harris told reporters Saturday that she and Cheney will “talk with folks about why it’s important for us to put country before party and value the very important foundational principles that we stand on.” Part of that pitch, she said, is “the importance of having a president in the White House who actually understands their job, and is fit to serve.”

Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, brushed off Harris’ upcoming events with Cheney, telling reporters Sunday in Wisconsin that the former congresswoman is “motivated by an obsessive hatred of the people who cost her Wyoming congressional seat.” He was referring to Cheney’s loss to a Trump-backed primary challenger in a 2022 primary, which followed her role on the House committee that investigated Trump’s actions on January 6, 2021.

“She is not motivated by a love of this country. She’s a resentful, petty, small person, and if Kamala Harris wants to parade her around, she’s welcome to,” Vance said.

Harris looks to ‘paint a picture’ for undecided voters

Suburban moderates are far from the only group Harris’ campaign is targeting in the race’s closing days.

She urged Black voters in Georgia to cast their ballots early in church visits Sunday. Her campaign has sought to reach Latino voters of Puerto Rican heritage in Pennsylvania, and Mexican heritage in Arizona and Nevada. Staffers are mounting a massive door-knocking effort to reach potential supporters, including irregular voters, which they see as an advantage over the ground game Trump has largely outsourced to outside groups.

As the Harris campaign tries to make inroads with men, podcasts like Joe Rogan’s are still under consideration, a source familiar with the matter said. And the campaign plans to double down on reproductive freedom, including abortion rights, as it works to turn women out to vote, the source said.

But the overall message — the one Harris is driving in speeches and interviews, and her campaign is emphasizing on television advertisements blanketing the battleground states — is increasingly focused on Trump’s own behavior and character. The vice president is playing clips of some of Trump’s wildest comments at her own rallies.

“We’re trying to paint a picture,” Harris senior adviser David Plouffe said Friday on CNN. “One of these two people is going to be in the White House. When you think about Donald Trump — increasingly unstable, desirous of unchecked power — how is that going to work out for you?”

Last week, Harris rallied with 100 Republicans who back her candidacy in Washington Crossing, Pennsylvania — in Bucks County, a suburban Philadelphia region that was key to President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory, and emblematic of the suburban shift in Democrats’ favor during Trump’s presidency. Biden expanded the Democratic advantage in the competitive county by about 15,000 votes in 2020 compared to 2016, on his way to flipping Trump’s 44,000-vote victory in the state in 2016 into an 82,000-vote Biden victory in 2020.

“No matter your party, no matter who you voted for last time, there is a place for you in this campaign,” Harris said last week. “The coalition we have built has room for everyone who is ready to turn the page on the chaos and instability of Donald Trump and I pledge to you to be a president for all Americans, and I take that pledge seriously.”

Trump says Haley could join him on trail

Harris’ push to court suburban women, in particular, comes as polls show this year’s election could see a historic gender gap — with a clear majority of women backing the Democratic nominee and Trump racking up big margins with men.

Trump told reporters Sunday in Philadelphia he thinks Haley, who endorsed him in a speech at this summer’s Republican National Convention, is soon going to join him on the campaign trail for the first time.

She appealed to moderate voters and women in their 2024 primary — including many of the same voters Harris’ campaign is targeting in the race’s late stages. Trump’s campaign has been touting Haley’s endorsement in battleground states. A billboard recently placed in the Milwaukee suburbs, for example, read: “Endorsed by Nikki Haley.”

“She wanted to join me, and I said absolutely, I’d love to have her, I want everybody’s support,” Trump said.

Joint appearances would come after Haley loaned Trump’s campaign her voice for a robocall in which she criticizes Biden and Harris over inflation and border security, and says she is voting for Trump. “I don’t agree with President Trump 100% of the time. You might not either. But we have a decision to make, and I’m looking at what we know about each candidate,” Haley says in the robocall.

The former president’s campaign has sought to chip away at the gender gap in recent days, including with a town hall on Fox News with all female voters in Georgia last week. But the Harris campaign immediately seized on his comments at the event, where he declared himself the “father of IVF,” referring to in vitro fertilization, and said he’d recently asked Alabama Sen. Katie Britt to explain what it is to him.

At a rally Thursday in Green Bay, Wisconsin, Harris played video clips of the former president bragging about appointing Supreme Court justices who in 2022 overturned Roe v. Wade’s national abortion rights protections.

“The man calls himself the father of IVF. I mean, what does that even mean?” Harris said, laughing. “When you listen to Donald Trump talk, it becomes increasingly clear, I think, he has no idea what he’s talking about when it comes to the health care of women in America.”

Progressives shrug off Cheney appearances

Harris’ increasing time on the trail with Cheney and other dissenting Republicans has occasionally ruffled some feathers among progressive commentators. Vice President Dick Cheney’s endorsement — and Harris’ kind words for the Iraq War architect — drew the fiercest backlash.

Progressive organizers and operatives, though, have largely held their noses.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent who sought the 2016 and 2020 Democratic presidential nominations, defended Harris on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday, saying she is trying to show that beyond the issues, “there are reasons to vote against Donald Trump.”

“I think what we’re seeing is a coalition of people, more establishment Democrats and progressive Democrats and progressive independents — I’m the longest-serving independent in American history — come together with the goal of defeating a very dangerous candidate, and that is Donald Trump,” he said.

Leah Greenberg, co-executive director of the grassroots Indivisible Project, told CNN that progressives out knocking doors for Harris are keenly “aware” that moderate Republican votes are “on the table due to Trump’s extremism.”

“We want to build the biggest tent that we can to support Kamala and win historic margins in the Senate and House,” Greenberg said. “That means we won’t always agree inside the tent — and that’s OK.”

CNN’s Daniel Strauss, Priscilla Alvarez, Gregory Krieg, Kristen Holmes, Alayna Treene, Steve Contorno and Kit Maher contributed to this report.

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