Vice President Kamala Harris is increasingly zeroing in on a group of voters her campaign believes could make a critical difference in several key battleground states: Republicans and Republican-leaning independents who can\u2019t get themselves to support former President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On Wednesday, Harris held an event with many of her leading Republican surrogates<\/a> in Bucks County, Pennsylvania \u2014 a crucial swing area of the key battleground state. In rural western Pennsylvania one day prior, her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, held an event<\/a> at the farm of a former Trump voter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Those events followed a much-hyped rally in Wisconsin where Harris appeared alongside<\/a> former Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., during which Harris touted support<\/a> from her and her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, who left office with notably low approval ratings<\/a>. On Saturday, the Harris campaign announced a battleground state tour of panels with the younger Cheney.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Harris campaign \u2014 which believes these voters are being undercounted in polling \u2014 had them front of mind when scheduling an interview with Fox News on Wednesday, just before her event with Republican supporters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This voting bloc has also played a big role in the thinking behind her pitch of a bipartisan policy council<\/a> in her White House and pledge to tap a Republican for her Cabinet, as well as her drift from the left-wing positions she pitched during the 2020 Democratic presidential primary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cUnlike Donald Trump, who frankly, as we have seen, cares more about running on problems than fixing problems, I want to fix problems, which means working across the aisle,\u201d Harris said Wednesday during her Bucks County rally. \u201cIt requires working across the aisle. It requires embracing good ideas from wherever they come.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s reason to think the group ranging from anti-Trump Republicans to Trump skeptics has grown since the 2020 election. First, there was the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, which saw a number of Republicans \u2014 including some on his own staff \u2014 break from Trump. Then, there was the significant protest vote lodged against Trump in this year\u2019s GOP primary after his rivals, namely former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, ended their campaigns. But pro-Harris Republicans still acknowledge winning these voters on the margins is a tough battle in the weeks ahead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhen they\u2019re in private, it seems like an easy task,\u201d said former Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, who appeared alongside Harris in Pennsylvania and soured on Trump after the 2020 election. \u201cWhen they\u2019re in a public setting, it doesn\u2019t seem like an easy task.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThere\u2019s peer pressure in politics,\u201d he added. \u201cIt\u2019s a real thing, and so a lot of Republicans don\u2019t want to publicly state [their support], and that\u2019s what I think is leading to the tightness of the polls that we see. I think there\u2019s a whisper caucus that\u2019s going to do something different [at the ballot box] than they\u2019re signaling.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Trump\u2019s Pennsylvania spokesperson Kush Desai said the Republicans Harris rallied with in Bucks County were \u201cdug up out of irrelevance\u201d and amounted to a \u201ctheatrical prop.\u201d The Trump campaign sees this increased effort as a distraction from bigger issues the Harris campaign faces \u2014 particularly with support among young Black men in places like Philadelphia and Detroit that the Harris campaign is racing to shore up<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThey are spending heavily in areas they should already have locked up,\u201d a senior Trump campaign adviser said. \u201cNot the first time Liz Cheney\u2019s been used as a decoy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Any losses Trump suffers with these disaffected Republicans, the Trump campaign believes, will be more than accounted for by boosting support among traditional Democratic voting blocs, including union workers and Black men, as well as low-propensity voters who polls have shown favor Trump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cKamala is spending more time trying to cobble together her own base than reach independent voters,\u201d Karoline Leavitt, a Trump campaign spokesperson, said. \u201cPresident Trump is on full blown offense, polling better than he ever has, leading in the battlegrounds, and picking up historic gains with new voters.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another Trump campaign official pointed to the former president holding events in traditional Democratic strongholds, including the Bronx and Coachella, California, to bolster their case for growing the GOP tent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOur coalition has grown completely beyond traditional Republicans,\u201d a Trump campaign official said, pointing to former independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, as \u201cbig ones that are much more well known than Liz Cheney, or at least more relevant.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Polling offers a mixed perspective on Harris\u2019 draw with Trump-skeptical Republicans. An October NBC News survey showed her winning over 6% of GOP support nationally, the same level that exit polls<\/a> showed President Joe Biden winning in 2020. But an October New York Times\/Siena College<\/a> poll showed Harris\u2019 support among Republicans at 9%, outpacing Trump\u2019s 3% support among Democrats in a survey with a margin of error of 2.4 percentage points. That same survey in October 2020<\/a> found Biden\u2019s GOP support at 7%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Harris campaign sees not only Jan. 6, but the fact that a number of prominent former Trump administration officials \u2014 including former Vice President Mike Pence \u2014 view him as unfit to be president, as key to their message to these voters. The Harris campaign recently launched a TV ad describing<\/a> Trump as \u201cunstable\u201d \u2014 messaging that Harris herself is using on the trail and in interviews.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They also see this point as core to their pitch to undecided Latino voters, such as the construction worker who asked Trump during a Univision town hall<\/a> this week about the Jan. 6 attack and the administration officials who\u2019ve come out against him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe didn\u2019t have guns,\u201d Trump said as part of his answer, tying himself to the rioters and incorrectly<\/a> stating none were armed<\/a>. \u201cThe others had guns, but we didn\u2019t have guns. And when I say \u2018we,\u2019 these are people that walked down \u2014 this was a tiny percentage of the overall, which nobody sees and nobody, nobody shows. But that was a day of love.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Others, though, say they\u2019re concerned that Jan. 6 might not be having as big of an impact on these voters as the Harris campaign would think.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI\u2019m hearing more on taxes, the kitchen-table issues and immigration that are rising to the surface,\u201d Jane Andersen, an anti-Trump conservative in Arizona and a member of Mormon Women for Ethical Government, told NBC News. \u201cAnd so I honestly don\u2019t know which way our state\u2019s going to go. I\u2019m concerned that our memory is really short when it comes to Jan. 6.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n But there\u2019s another angle that pro-Harris Republicans have said is making their pitch somewhat easier: the likelihood that Republicans gain control of the Senate this fall. For voters worried that Harris would shift policy further left, these Republicans said it allows for them to promote a check on her while warning of Trump\u2019s unchecked potential.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhen this election is over, there will be plenty of Republicans in the Congress,\u201d former Rep. Jim Greenwood, R-Pa., who is leading the state branch of Republicans for Harris, said of his pitch to skeptical Republicans. \u201cKamala Harris will need to and has continuously expressed that she wants to reach across the aisle and solve problems in a bipartisan way.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Both Greenwood and Duncan said Harris\u2019 move away from a fracking ban has made it easier to pitch Republicans, with Duncan adding her pivot away from universal health care and the Green New Deal was \u201chelpful for me to walk into [conservative] crowds.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Duncan too said that noting the likelihood of the Senate flipping into GOP control has eased some concerns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThere\u2019s an extremely high likelihood that we\u2019re going to have a split Congress to be a check and balance,\u201d Duncan said. \u201cIt\u2019s an insurance policy on a runaway idea that doesn\u2019t jive with their conservative approach. I\u2019ve heard it referred to in many Republican circles as an insurance policy against a runaway policy train.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Harris campaign insists its focus on these Republicans is not new, pointing to seven-figure investments it made dating back to when Biden was in the race. And the campaign says it\u2019s not ignoring other groups to focus on these Republicans, pointing to its policy rollout aimed at Black men<\/a> this week. It also pushed back on the idea that she is watering down her policy agenda to appeal to these voters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the ramp-up here has been obvious, with events with key surrogates lined up in the final weeks in hopes of reaching maximum impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n During her Fox News interview on Wednesday, Harris said she would invite ideas from Republicans when asked what she would do differently than Biden, whom she replaced on the ticket this summer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThere\u2019s a good number of independents and Haley-style Republicans who are very open to voting for VP Harris, and that\u2019s why we are open to doing events with Republicans and on Fox News,\u201d communications director Brian Fallon told reporters afterward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nowhere is the battle for these voters more clear than Pennsylvania. Ahead of its events<\/a> there this week, the Harris team authored a memo<\/a> detailing that its plan to win arguably the most critical battleground involved boosting its vote share in the suburbs with educated women and by shaving off Trump\u2019s margins in red counties, including with the roughly 160,000 Pennsylvania Republicans who cast a ballot for Haley in the state\u2019s closed party primary<\/a> earlier this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThey\u2019re hugely important,\u201d a Harris campaign official in the Keystone State said. \u201cAnd it\u2019s not just limited to the suburbs, but there\u2019s a lot of people like that in more rural places as well, who were already tired of Trump, wanted somebody like Nikki Haley instead, and didn\u2019t get it, because this is now the party of Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n This person said they believe surveys are \u201cundercounting\u201d support among Republicans and pointed to Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro<\/a> and Sen. John Fetterman<\/a> having outperformed<\/a> their pre-Election<\/a> Day polling with Republicans in the state in 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The October Pennsylvania poll from The Philadelphia Inquirer\/New York Times\/Siena College<\/a> has Harris pulling support from 7% of Pennsylvania Republicans \u2014 a lower total than exit polls showed Shapiro and Fetterman won in 2022. That survey has a margin of error of 3.9 percentage points and found Trump winning the support of 5% of state Democrats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n