It’s not just former Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan. Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign spent part of the first day of the Democratic National Convention on Monday highlighting the Republicans who have publicly come out against former President Donald Trump and for her instead.
By the end of the convention, delegates will have heard from the Republican mayor of Mesa, Arizona, a former White House press secretary to Trump, former Republican U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger and from Duncan himself.
From the GOP speeches to a pastor’s address to chants of “USA! USA!” and country singers, you could have been forgiven at some points Monday night for mistaking the DNC with a convention Republicans might have hosted in the past. It’s all part of an effort to tell Republicans who once supported Trump that there is a place for them in the Harris coalition.
That includes Rich Rogis, a Republican from Florida, who was featured in a prime-time video Monday talking about his reasons for opposing Trump after being a “full-fledged member of MAGA” before 2020.
“I believed Trump. I was a MAGA pundit, I had my own podcast,” Rogis said. “But when the pandemic hit, we needed leadership and we were given nothing.”
A separate video montage Monday included more former Trump voters saying they are ready to vote for Harris.
“I am a two-time Trump voter,” one said. “I won’t be voting for Trump this time around.”
Another added, “I’m actually embarrassed to say I voted for Trump in 2016. Everything he said he would do, he didn’t.”
Earlier in the day and on his own, retired conservative Judge Michael Luttig released his statement saying that he’s also voting for Harris after a lifetime of never voting for a Democrat. His only goal, he said, is to defeat Trump.
Luttig had been a leading voice ahead of the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021, urging then-Vice President Mike Pence not to go along with Trump’s efforts to overturn the election he’d just lost. In his statement Monday, Luttig said that Trump’s conduct following the election and on Jan. 6 “corrupted America’s Democracy.”
“I assume that (Harris’) public policy views are vastly different from my own,” he wrote. “But I am indifferent in this election as to her policy views on any issues other than America’s Democracy, the Constitution, and the Rule of Law, as I believe all Americans should be.”
If that sounds familiar, it’s strikingly similar to Geoff Duncan’s reasons for endorsing Harris for president earlier this summer when he said defeating Trump is more important than any policy position.
Alongside the Republicans against Trump, delegates heard Monday from liberal stars such as U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez; Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat who won in a deep red state; and rising Democratic leaders such as Georgia’s U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock.
“I want everyone watching tonight, Democrat, Republican, independent, to know, you are welcome here,” Beshear told the millions in the audience watching the convention from home.
The Republicans and independents Beshear talked to are the same ones Harris will need to win in battleground states such as Georgia in November. And they were a part of the same coalitions that powered Beshear’s victory in Kentucky in 2023 and Warnock’s win in Georgia the year before that.
Warnock told me Monday that he thinks Harris can win the same “commonsense Republicans” that he did when he defeated Herschel Walker two years ago. They were the “Kemp Republicans” who split their tickets between Warnock and Gov. Brian Kemp.
“I think there’s a reason why you saw a number of Republicans vote for me, because of the work I was doing, but also because they were looking at the alternative,” Warnock said.
“Elections are about a choice, and Kamala Harris needs to be compared not to the Almighty, as I believe President Obama famously said, but to the alternative. And it couldn’t be more stark.”
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