In the weeks since Kamala Harris moved to the top of the Democratic ticket, different identity groups — from “White Dudes” to “Comics” — have hosted Zoom calls stirring up support for the vice president. But on Tuesday night, a new group held its first rally for the Democratic nominee: Republicans.
Republicans for Harris, a campaign within the Democratic campaign — aimed at recruiting disaffected Republicans to vote for Harris over Donald Trump — held its first digital gathering on Tuesday night with several Republicans who have already endorsed the vice president, including former Rep. Adam Kinzinger, former Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, former Rep. Joe Walsh, former U.S. Treasurer Rosario Marin and political strategists Rina Shah and Craig Snyder.
Moderated by former Mike Pence staffer Olivia Troye, the rally gave around five minutes to each speaker to persuade those watching the rally to vote for Harris. As one of the organizers, Reed Howard, put it: The call was to persuade Republicans who are “Kamala-curious.” And judging by the turnout, there are plenty of Republicans who may be considering Harris.
On X alone, the Republicans for Harris group already has more than 100,000 followers, and organizers said more than 70,000 people watched the rally.
“This is one of the biggest groups of, you know, a different party for somebody like Kamala Harris that I’ve seen,” Kinzinger said ahead of the rally. “There’s a lot of momentum behind this.”
The rally got a forceful boost Tuesday when actor Mark Hamill — Luke Skywalker — announced he would be speaking. The event ultimately had so much interest that organizers had to move the event from Zoom to YouTube to accommodate all the participants.
But despite the star power of Hamill and Republicans like Kinzinger, it was Marin and Shah who stole the show, highlighting not only their conservative credentials but also their identities as women of color.
Shah, who in 2016 became the first elected RNC delegate to speak out against Trump, said she knew exactly how Vice President Harris felt when Trump attacked her for being biracial.
“As a daughter of immigrants from India and Uganda, I know exactly what Harris had to face. And when Trump tried to call out her identity, tried to make her feel little and make her seem inauthentic because she was embracing one side of her as a biracial woman, just because she did that didn’t mean she was rejecting another side of her,” Shah said.
She noted that she was born in the southern West Virginia coalfields. “And when I enter a room and embrace my Indian or African heritage, I’m not rejecting my West Virginia side,” Shah said. “I’m just being an American, and I’m speaking to all parts of me.”
Shah argued that Trump’s treatment of women was antithetical to the GOP she knows.
“I don’t want the government in my backyard, my bedroom, my bank account and certainly not in the medical exam room,” she said.
Marin, a former mayor of Huntington Park who later became U.S. treasurer under George W. Bush, also forcefully spoke out against Trump. She directed her speech to those disaffected Republicans in swing states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Georgia.
“Your vote can and will make a difference,” Marin said. “It is not easy to vote outside your party, believe me. I know you may lose friends. Your neighbors may disagree with you. Family gatherings may turn uncomfortable. But at the end of the day, I can assure you that you will know in your heart that you did the right thing.”
“I certainly don’t agree with everything that Kamala Harris has proposed,” she added, but she said “the alternative is unacceptable.”
As she finished talking, she told a story about meeting Nancy Reagan at the Reagan Library, where the former first lady told her: “‘I only wish Ronnie would have met you; he would have been so proud.’”
Craig Snyder, who started Haley Voters for Harris and said he was an “OG Never Trumper,” was the one speaker who made a proactive argument for Harris — as well as the job that Never Trumpers have less than 100 days from the election.
“Our job is to present trusted Republican voices to Haley voters and other center-right folks in this country, and to just tell them the truth, which is that Kamala Harris is a tough prosecutor who has been attacked in most of her career from the left, not from the right,” Snyder said.
To him, voting for the Democratic ticket is a temporary solution to save the United States.
“When the Harris team wins and prevents the sudden death of American democracy, we can joyfully return people to arguing over marginal tax rates and the role of government and health care and all the other kinds of issues that defined our politics for generations,” he said.
Since her entrance to the race, enthusiasm has been sky-high for Harris’ campaign. Still, early polling shows that Harris has work to do to convince Republicans to cross the aisle and vote for her.
A Marist College poll taken during the first week of August showed that only 4% of Republicans planned to vote for Harris, as opposed to the 8% of Republicans who said they would’ve voted for Biden in a poll taken the first week of July.
At the end of the call, Hamill, a self-described lifelong Democrat, made one simple request: Make sure to register to vote.
“If people turned out to vote, there’s more of us than there are of them. It’s as simple as that,” Hamill said. “So tell your friends to tell their friends to tell their friends to vote.”
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Ryan Hernández is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.