Photo by Newsweek
By Monica Sager
Newsweek
August 5, 2024
Vice President Kamala Harris‘s presidential campaign launched a “Republicans for Harris” push over the weekend, with some notable conservatives, including a former New Jersey governor, voicing their support for the Democratic nominee.
“I may not agree with everything and every position of Harris but I know Trump is not going to change and that’s not good for our country,” former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman said on CNN Monday morning. She added that “voting for Harris will “preserve our democracy at least for the next four years.”
Whitman called the differences between the two tickets “stark.”
“His policies don’t make any sense,” Whitman said. “The Republican party used to be a party of principles.”
Republicans for Harris, which is effectively a relaunch of the Republicans for Biden group, is going up with ads and themed events while using well-known Republicans like Whitman to back the campaign.
President Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race on July 21 following weeks of intra-party fighting among Democrats on whether he should pass the torch to the next generation after his debate fiasco against former President Donald Trump in late June in Atlanta.
Biden endorsed Harris the day he withdrew from the race and she has since amassed the delegates needed to become the official Democratic presidential nominee to go up against Trump in November.
The Republicans for Harris group will put on events this week in Arizona, North Carolina and Pennsylvania in order to create “a permission structure” for GOP voters who would otherwise have had a difficult time voting for Harris, the campaign told the Associated Press. It is designed to “further outreach efforts to the millions of Republican voters who continued to reject the chaos, division, and violence of Donald Trump and his Project 2025 agenda.”
In its Sunday announcement, the Harris campaign also included dozens of prominent current or former Republican figures, some of which now identify with a different party, who have already endorsed the vice president.
Trump’s “extremism is toxic to the millions of Republicans who no longer believe the party of Donald Trump represents their values” and will vote against him again in November, Harris’s national director of Republican outreach, Austin Weatherford, told the AP.
More than a dozen endorsements have already come from Republicans, including former Trump White House officials Stephanie Grisham and Olivia Troye.
“I might not agree with Vice President Kamala Harris on everything, but I know that 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.
Troye, who served as the homeland security and counterterrorism advisor to then-Vice President Mike Pence, said she witnessed the “destruction and chaos firsthand” that marked Trump’s term in office.
“As a lifelong Republican, I may not agree with Kamala Harris on everything, but I trust her to protect our freedoms, uphold the rule of law & provide steady leadership on the world stage,” Troye posted to X, formerly known as Twitter. “That’s why I’m voting for Kamala Harris.”
The list of Republican endorsers also includes former cabinet secretaries Chuck Hagel and Ray LaHood, former governors Jim Edgar and Bill Weld, and former members of Congress like Adam Kinzinger, Claudine Schneider and Joe Walsh.
“As a proud conservative, I never thought I’d be endorsing a Democrat for President,” Kinzinger said in a statement. “But, I know Vice President Harris will defend our democracy and ensure Donald Trump never returns to the White House.”