'Major misfire': Here’s why Harris’ effort to court moderate Republicans crashed and burned

07 November 2024

One mainstay of Vice President Kamala Harris' 2024 presidential campaign was the anti-MAGA sect of Republicans. But her effort to add conservatives to the Democrats' big tent fell flat.

A recent Rolling Stone report by journalist Andrew Perez explored why Harris brought in a smaller percentage of Republicans than President Joe Biden in 2020 and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2016 despite her repeated entreaties. Traditional conservatives like former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming) and former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Illinois) were meant to give a permission structure to Republicans uncomfortable with the idea of voting for convicted felon and adjudicated rapist (and now President-elect) Donald Trump. But as Harris painstakingly built an off-ramp for supposedly disaffected Republicans, it turned out very few of them ended up taking it.

"Harris only received 5 percent of Republican votes — less than the 6 percent Joe Biden won in 2020 when he beat Trump, as well as the 7 percent won by Hillary Clinton in 2016 when she lost to him," Perez wrote. "While Harris won independents and moderates, she did so by smaller margins than Biden did in 2020."

"[T]he exit polls suggest Harris’ investment in courting Republicans was a major misfire," Perez added. "And while Democrats were busy making the case that Republicans should leave Trump, voters fled the Democratic Party instead — or stayed home."

Aside from her reliance on Republican campaign surrogates, Harris made unsuccessful attempts to court the right in other ways. She repeatedly promised on the campaign trail to pass the bipartisan immigration reform bill chiefly written by Sen. James Lankford (R-Oklahoma) in 2023. Lankford himself praised the bill as "by far the most conservative border security bill in four decades."

As NBC News reported at the time, that bill "was crafted to reduce border crossings, raise the standard for migrants to qualify for asylum and empower officials to rapidly send away those who fail to meet that standard." Additionally, the network reported that the legislation "would give the president power to shut down the border if migration levels exceed certain thresholds." Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) blasted Trump's efforts behind the scenes to tank it, saying that the ex-president's opposition was only because he didn't want Biden to take credit for a conservative border bill in the election.

Ultimately, Harris' embrace of hawkish immigration policy failed to move the needle in any meaningful way among voters. Perez reported that only 36% of respondents in a Fox News survey said Harris would be the best candidate on immigration, whereas a majority still preferred Trump.

Harris had hoped to peel off pieces of Trump's coalition given that a significant portion of the Republican primary electorate indicated an initial coldness to the ex-president. Perez pointed out that in an interview with Daily Show host Jon Stewart, Minnesota Democratic Governor Tim Walz said the campaign's goal was to allow Republicans to "get off the MAGA stuff and move over." The Democratic ticket spent a lot of time in Georgia and Pennsylvania hoping to court Republicans who voted for former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley even after she suspended her campaign after March's Super Tuesday primaries and caucuses.

In Pennsylvania, for example, more than 156,000 Republican primary voters still cast their ballot for Haley, despite her dropping out of the race more than a month prior. Likewise, over 77,000 Georgia Republicans still voted for Haley in the Peach State's primary despite Haley having already exited the race. Harris ultimately lost both states on Tuesday.

Click here to read Perez's full report in Rolling Stone.

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