Republican former Rep. Liz Cheney hit the campaign trail with Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday in Ripon, Wisconsin, part of a coordinated effort by the Harris campaign to deploy her Republican allies to key battleground states in the final month of the presidential campaign.
“I tell you, I have never voted for a Democrat, but this year, I am proudly casting my vote for Vice President Kamala Harris,” Cheney told the crowd.
Cheney said in September that both she and her father, Republican former Vice President Dick Cheney, would be voting for Harris over their party’s nominee, former President Donald Trump.
Cheney is a long-time critic of Trump’s, and she was one of just 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach him for inciting the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot. She later served as vice chair of the House select committee that investigated the deadly attack.
“At the very heart of our survival as a republic is the peaceful transition of power,” Cheney said Thursday, adding that the president has an obligation to guarantee this. “Every president in our history has fulfilled that duty, every president until Donald Trump.”
The joint Harris-Cheney event took place only a day after a federal judge in Washington D.C. unsealed a 165-page filing from Special Counsel Jack Smith, detailing evidence against Trump in his criminal election interference case.
After six years in office including two years as chair of the House Republican Conference, Cheney lost her Wyoming GOP primary race in 2022 to Trump-backed Rep. Harriet Hageman. In her primary concession speech, Cheney attributed her loss directly to her opposition to Trump.
Thursday’s venue was carefully chosen: Ripon, Wisconsin is known as the birthplace of the Republican Party because a one-room schoolhouse there was the site of at least two meetings that helped form the Republican Party in 1854. Today, the schoolhouse is a National Historic Landmark.
Harris also addressed the significance of the town in her remarks, and promised to be “a president for all Americans,” in a direct appeal to Republican voters.
“Liz Cheney stands in the finest tradition of [the Republican party’s] leaders,” said Harris. “And if people across Wisconsin and our nation are willing to do what Liz is doing, to stand up for the rule of law, for our democratic ideals … then together, I know we can chart a new way forward, not as members of any one party, but as Americans.”
Flanked by campaign signs that said “Country over Party,” Harris spoke about the importance of a peaceful transfer of power in a democratic republic.
“If you share that view, no matter your political party, there is a place for you with us in this campaign,” she said.
The Harris campaign has been looking for ways to take advantage of opposition to Trump within the Republican party.
In August, the campaign launched “Republicans for Harris.” Since then, a small but growing number of prominent Republicans have come out in support of Harris’ presidential campaign, including former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson and the Cheneys.
Ahead of Harris’ visit, a group of over 20 former and current Wisconsin Republican leaders launched the Wisconsin Republicans for Harris-Walz campaign platform, and endorsed Harris for president in an open letter.
“We have plenty of policy disagreements with Vice President Harris. But what we do agree upon is more important,” the group wrote. “We agree that we cannot afford another four years of the broken promises, election denialism, and chaos of Donald Trump’s leadership.”
The group said it would host Republican voter outreach events with a focus on areas of Wisconsin where former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley won considerable support in her GOP presidential primary campaign against Trump.
Although the former president won Wisconsin’s Electoral College votes in his upset victory over Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential race, four years later, Democratic President Joe Biden flipped the Badger State back to blue.
Recent polls show Harris and Trump essentially tied, or within the margin of error, in the presidential race nationally. Yet most polls show Harris with a small, but consistent, lead over Trump in Wisconsin.
Thursday night’s campaign event was Harris’ fifth visit to Wisconsin, and her first visit to the town of Ripon since she launched her presidential campaign in July.