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REPUBLICANS ENDORSE KAMALA HARRIS

Republicans, including mayors and former Trump officials, who will vote for Kamala Harris


Republicans who have endorsed Kamala Harris for President: (from left) Arnold Schwarzenegger, former Governor of California; Stephanie Grisham, Former press secretary of President Trump; Shawn Reilly, Mayor of Waukesha (Wisconsin)


November 2024: Since US Vice President Kamala Harris was chosen as the Democratic nominee for the US presidency, hundreds of mayors and other elected officers from across America have endorsed her candidacy. While the majority of mayors who support Kamala Harris belong to the Democratic Party, a surprisingly large number of Republican mayors have said they could not endorse the GOP nominee, Donald Trump and will vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. Most American women mayors also support the Vice President in her quest to lead the nation.

 

Early in the Harris-Walz campaign, more than two dozen mayors from Arizona, an important ‘swing state’, have pledged their support for the Democratic nominee. The list includes John Giles, the Republican mayor of Mesa, the state's third-largest city. The Mayor told the Arizona Republic newspaper that now, more than ever, the country needs leaders who put the country above party. He continued: “We can choose a future for our children and grandchildren based on decency, respect and morality or succumb to the crudeness and vulgarity of Donald Trump and JD Vance and the far-right agenda they champion.”

 

Waukesha (Wisconsin) Mayor Shawn Reilly is the latest former Republican mayor to support Kamala Harris. The Mayor left the Republican Party and became an Independent after the 6 January 2021 attack on the US Capitol by Donald Trump supporters. His decision to publicly endorse the Democrat nominee two weeks before the election surprised people in his city. Waukesha is a Republican city in Wisconsin’s (another ‘swing state’) largest Republican county. Donald Trump won the City of Waukesha in both 2016 and 2020. In 2016, he won it by 11 percentage points. In 2020, the lead shrunk to 5.5 points.

 

Donald Trump's lead in the wider county was larger. He won 17,000 more votes in Waukesha County in 2020 compared with 2016, but his percentage in the county stayed at about 60 per cent. That underperformed what other Republicans won in this crucial county, including Governor Scott Walker, who won 66 per cent. Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney won 66 percent in 2012.

 

Wisconsin Republicans criticised Reilly's endorsement. "Only voters already committed to Kamala Harris care one iota about what a liberal like Shawn Reilly thinks," said the chairman of the Wisconsin Republican Party.

 

In a statement to journalists, Mayor Reilly said: “It would be easier for me to stay quiet and vote my conscience privately, but the stakes of this election are so important that I feel compelled to share publicly that I am voting for Vice President Kamala Harris and I encourage other Wisconsinites who care about our country to do the same,” He added that former President Donald Trump posed a unique danger to American democracy and a second term would be even more dangerous than the first because there would be no guardrails.

 

Mayor Reilly’s decision is supported by Republican state senator Robert Cowles, who himself has endorsed Kamala Harris, a decision he called one of the most important things I have done. He described Donald Trump as a totalitarian and very much a fascist. "We have to show the courage that the people in the World War II era had,” Senator Cowles added.

 

Other prominent Republicans who have endorsed Kamala Harris include Former Vice President Dick Cheney, who said: “In our nation's 248-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump," he said in a statement on Sept. 6. "He tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him. He can never be trusted with power again. As citizens, we must put the country above partisanship to defend our Constitution. That is why I will vote for Vice President Kamala Harris." 

 

Stephanie Grisham was a White House press secretary under Donald Trump and chief of staff to first lady Melania Trump before resigning on 6 January 2021, when a mob of the former president's supporters violently breached the US Capitol. She lambasted the former president as having no empathy, no morals and no fidelity to the truth. "I love my country more than my party," Stephanie Grisham said. "Kamala Harris tells the truth. She respects the American people, and she has my vote."

Former Georgia Lt. Governor who split with Donald Trump over his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. “To my fellow Republicans at home who want to pivot back toward policy, empathy and tone: You know the right thing to do. Now let's have the courage to do it in November," Duncan said, calling Harris a "steady hand.”

 

Former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican who has been consistently critical of Trump, endorsed Kamala Harris one week before the election. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was born in Austria and immigrated to the US in 1968 before becoming a citizen in 1983, said he would "always be an American before I am a Republican," adding that Trump's comments about the nation being a garbage can for the world are "so unpatriotic, it makes me furious." "That's why I am voting for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz this week," he said.



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