BROOKFIELD, Wis. — Less than a week after a battleground campaign blitz in Wisconsin that included Milwaukee, La Crosse and Green Bay, Vice President Kamala Harris returned to the Badger State Monday evening to make an appeal to Republicans directly in one of the party’s historic strongholds: Waukesha County.
Monday marked the second time former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney has campaigned alongside Vice President Harris in Wisconsin. Similar to the first visit, which was held at Ripon College, this trip also came in a part of the state that favors conservative candidates.
“The world is watching this election and our allies are worried,” Harris told the crowd gathered at Sharon Lynne Wilson Center for the Arts. “I believe that when we think about who we are as the American people, there is more we have in common than separates us when we think about what’s at stake in terms of our democracy, rule of law, the constitution of the United States, national security.”
Just a day after Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance hit the trail in Waukesha County, Harris also reached out to Republicans there.
“You don’t have to take my word for it, listen to the people who know [Trump] best. The people who worked with him in the White House, in the Oval Office, in the Situation Room,” Harris added. “His former chief of staff, two former secretaries of defense, his secretaries of defense, his former national security advisor, and, of course, his former vice president.”
Former Milwaukee conservative talk show host Charlie Sykes, who, along with several other local Wisconsin Republicans endorsed Harris for president, moderated Monday’s discussion.
“I never thought I would be here. You never thought I would be here,” Sykes told the audience before introducing Harris.
He started by asking Cheney why she’s encouraging fellow Republicans to vote for a Democrat.
“We might not agree on every issue, but she is somebody that you can trust and someone that our children can look up to,” Cheney explained. “If you wouldn’t hire somebody to babysit your kids, like you shouldn’t make that guy the President of the United States.”
The Harris-Walz campaign said since July, there have been a thousand new volunteers across the three WOW counties of Waukesha, Ozaukee and Washington. In Waukesha alone, 35,000 doors have been knocked, so far.
The campaign hopes those efforts will make a difference among those who are still undecided about what to do now with two weeks to go.
“[Trump] tends to encourage us as Americans to point our fingers at each other. That’s not in our best interest,” Harris said. “The vast majority of us have so much more in common than what separates us. We are stronger as a nation when we are working toward a common goal.”
Meanwhile, the Trump campaign blasted the moderated discussion for using who it believes are “irrelevant” Republicans.
“Showing off irrelevant former ‘Republicans’ of the past at campaign events doesn’t change the fact that Kamala Harris is running to extend her record of unlimited illegal immigration, rising prices, and endless wars abroad by another four years,” Team Trump Wisconsin Communications Director Jacob Fischer wrote in a statement. “Another incompetent Harris administration is the last thing Wisconsinites want or need, regardless of Liz Cheney’s opinions.”
Waukesha is the largest of the WOW counties and Democrats there managed to pick up six points in the 2020 presidential contest compared to 2016.