Ripon, Wisconsin — Former Rep. Liz Cheney, the highest-profile Republican to announce her support for Vice President Kamala Harris, is joining her on the campaign trail at an event at Ripon, Wisconsin, the birthplace of the Republican Party.
Cheney, along with her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, announced in September that Harris would have their vote. The Cheneys and Harris have practically nothing in common in their views on policy, but they a shared antipathy for former President Donald Trump and see him as a threat to democracy after the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.
“As a conservative, as someone who believes in and cares about the Constitution, I have thought deeply about this. And because of the danger that Donald Trump poses, not only am I not voting for Donald Trump, but I will be voting for Kamala Harris,” Cheney announced last month during an event at Duke University.
Cheney was the third highest-ranking Republican in the House before she was ousted for voting to impeach Trump. A Trump-backed challenger then defeated Cheney in her primary. Cheney was one of two Republicans who served on the House Jan. 6 select committee that investigated the riot and what led up to it. That committee recommended that Trump be prosecuted for his conduct surrounding the assault on the Capitol.
The Little White Schoolhouse in Ripon hosted meetings in 1854 that led to the creation of the Republican Party. It was designated a national historic site in 1974, and Harris is expected to address the significance of the location during her speech, according to a senior Harris campaign official.
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Cheney’s appearance with Harris is part of a concerted effort by the campaign to appeal to Republicans disaffected by Trump.
On Wednesday, the campaign launched a new ad featuring a direct-to-camera appeal from a two-time Trump voter in Pennsylvania who argued the former president’s economic plan will not benefit working voters.
The campaign is also hosting “Republicans for Harris” events across the battleground states this week, including an event with former Reps. Denver Riggleman in North Carolina and Adam Kinzinger in Las Vegas. Kinzinger also served on the House Jan. 6 committee, while Riggleman served as an adviser.
Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, noted the Cheney endorsement during the vice presidential debate on Tuesday to argue their coalition of support is wide.
“I’m as surprised as anybody of this coalition that Kamala Harris has built, from Bernie Sanders to Dick Cheney to Taylor Swift and a whole bunch of folks in between there,” Walz said. “They don’t all agree on everything, but they are truly optimistic people. They believe in a positive future of this country, and one where our politics can be better than it is.”
While only a small number of voters who identify as conservative are backing Harris, according to a September CBS News poll, voters who identify as “moderate” favor Harris over Trump by double digits.
Several Republican officials spoke at the Democratic National Convention in August, including Kinzinger, Georgia Lt. Gov.Geoff Duncan and Olivia Troye, a former adviser to then-Vice President Mike Pence.
Their activity for the campaign has continued. Troye has appeared in a Harris campaign ad, and Duncan has also been dispatched as a surrogate for the campaign in recent weeks.
After a September event in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, a GOP-leaning portion of the state, Duncan said Trump “makes it harder for himself” to not lose Republican support because of some of his criticism of Republican officials, such as Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp.
“There’s really no mystery to this. Support for Donald Trump amongst the majority of Republicans is a mile wide and an inch deep. Almost every Republican outside of a small wing of MAGA supporters would love to have somebody other than Donald Trump as their nominee, but that just didn’t happen,” Duncan told CBS News.
Kate Horning, an undecided Pennsylvania voter who attended the event and backed Trump in past elections, said she likes the outreach to Republicans but wants it to be “genuine.”
“There’s a lot of issues here. I’m not here to talk about abortion — I’m concerned about the amount of people coming across the border and how it impacts schools,” she said.
Since she became the nominee, Harris has tried to appeal to centrists by supporting restrictions on immigration backed on a bipartisan level in Congress, touting herself as a pro-business capitalist and reiterating she would not ban fracking — a position she held as a 2020 presidential primary candidate but abandoned after becoming President Biden’s running mate later that cycle.