Wisconsin plays a key role in Harris’ outreach to Trump-skeptical Republicans

Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign has been stacking up Republican endorsements in Wisconsin, a key swing state that has been central to her effort to attract voters from across the aisle who are skeptical of Donald Trump.

Over the past week, Harris snagged the public support of outgoing Republican state Sen. Robert Cowles, the longest-serving member of the Senate, and Shawn Reilly, the formerly Republican mayor of Waukesha, one of the state’s biggest GOP strongholds.

The battleground state, where elections are regularly decided by razor-thin margins, is a top priority for both campaigns, with Harris, Trump and their running mates scheduled to made stops there in the final full week of the presidential race.

Beyond the two endorsements Harris received that got national attention, several other local Republicans, from former sheriffs to members of the Legislature, have backed Harris in recent weeks. The wave started in earnest last month, when former Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, a longtime staple of national Republican politics who is now a fierce Trump critic, backed Harris at an event in Wisconsin, a state she has now been to twice with her.

“I was a Republican even before Donald Trump started spray tanning,” Cheney joked during her first visit last month in Ripon. “I tell you, I have never voted for a Democrat, but this year I am proudly casting my vote for Vice President Kamala Harris.”

Ripon, in Fond du Lac County, is recognized as the birthplace of the Republican Party in 1854. It and the site of Cheney’s other event this month in Waukesha County also hold a more modern distinction: Both places are home to large pockets of voters who opposed Trump in the GOP presidential primary.

Cheney’s events were intentionally held in the two countries as part of a broader Harris campaign strategy to target voters in the suburbs, where Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor who was Trump’s last standing Republican challenger this year, overperformed in the primary. That effort has extended to other swing states, including North Carolina and Pennsylvania.

“Our Republicans for Harris program is taking that unifying, inspiring message to anti-Trump Republicans, moderates, and independents,” Austin Weatherford, the national Republican engagement director for the Harris campaign, said in a statement. “We know that these are votes we need to earn, and we’re continuing to put in the work everyday to win over the millions of Republicans who are ready to turn the page on the chaos, extremism, and division of Donald Trump.”

A co-chair of the effort in Wisconsin is Tracy Ann Mangold, a longtime Republican activist in the state, who said she is loyal to the U.S. Constitution over any single political party.

“It was weird. The Republican Party used to be the big-tent party; now that’s the Democrats,” she said. “I am a very strong person for the Constitution, and when you have one party demonizing the Constitution and a person disparaging our Constitution, they do not belong in the Oval Office.”

Mangold’s group has worked directly with the Harris campaign to find additional Republicans who might publicly endorse Harris, to try to knock on doors of Republicans who might be persuaded to work her and to hold large phone bank events to reach out to those potentially flippable voters.

“I’ve been hosting phone banks every Wednesday night and emails to people that we think would be voters for Harris,” she said.

Trump’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment. When Cheney first visited the state, it called her “irrelevant” in a statement.

“Another incompetent Harris administration is the last thing Wisconsinites want or need, regardless of Liz Cheney’s opinions,” campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said in the statement.

Several other Wisconsin Republicans have joined the effort backing Harris in recent weeks, including former state Assembly member Sheehan Donoghue and Steve Michek, the former sheriff of rural Iowa County.

There has also been a concerted effort for Harris-aligned canvassing teams in Wisconsin to knock on doors and directly reach out to Republicans or conservative-leaning independents. In those interactions, the messaging goal is to focus on what they see as Trump’s more extreme views.

“We hear a lot about Jan. 6, Donald Trump’s extremism, protecting our institutions, those sorts of things,” Timothy White, Harris’ Wisconsin press secretary, said about the issues that come up when they are knocking on doors of persuadable Republicans and independents.

Reilly’s endorsement in particular made major waves and was seen as a big win for Harris. Waukesha County, where the city he leads of the same name is located, is the largest Republican-leaning county in the state and part of a bloc of three counties in the Milwaukee suburbs, with Ozaukee and Washington, that have been turnout engines for Republicans in past elections.

The three counties, dubbed the “WOW” counties, produced 15% of all votes for Trump in a state with 72 counties in 2020.

“It is a vote against Trump,” Reilly told WITI-TV of Milwaukee. “I am terrified of Donald Trump becoming our next president for all the reasons I have indicated: He’s already been impeached twice.

“He’s been convicted of felonies, and this is not what the United States needs,” he added.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com