ALEXANDRIA, VA — Republicans appear to have settled on their argument to convince other Republicans to vote for Kamala Harris — and it has nothing to do with Harris herself.
Former GOP congressman and Freedom Caucus member-turned Jan. 6 committee staff member Denver Riggleman summed up his argument to a crowd of anti-Trumpers in a nearby Washington, D.C., suburb on Thursday afternoon: A vote for Harris doesn’t mean you agree with Harris; it means you disagree with Donald Trump.
“Anybody who’s been found liable for sexual abuse, somebody that’s a felon, somebody that’s a conspiracy theorist, somebody who helped to incite J-6, somebody who’s an apologist for Putin, somebody who is immoral, somebody who doesn’t understand foreign policy, and somebody who has such a bad connection to the truth, should not be president of the United States,” he said. “And that’s why I’m supporting Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.”
Riggleman, alongside fellow former Virginia GOP Rep. Barbara Comstock and former Trump national security adviser Olivia Troye, each spoke of their fair share of problems with Harris. But Harris’ own policies barely came up at an event hosted by the Harris campaign.
“I’m a Republican. Do I agree with everything that’s probably going to happen in the Kamala Harris administration? No. But I’m not worried about her doing favors for dictators,” Troye told NOTUS.
“There’s really challenges there for people who are so policy oriented,” Riggleman said of Harris. “Listen, I’m not going to agree with Kamala Harris probably 30% of the time, but she’s not insane, and she’s going to protect democratic institutions.”
The Republicans suggested the most compelling argument they had for other Republicans was, in fact, that Harris is not Trump.
“Sure, there’s going to be things you don’t like. Let me tell you, there’s a lot more things like democracy that you’re going to miss if Donald Trump is reelected,” Comstock said.
Comstock pointed to the guardrails in place of a divided government that would keep Harris from going too far. With the Senate on track to flip to a GOP majority, Harris won’t have a choice but to lead from the middle.
“I think the House is going to flip, so you’re going to have that divided government, where she will then want to be reelected, so she will have to work in a bipartisan way,” Comstock predicted.
“When you look at a lot of the policies and the fact that it’s probably going to be a divided government, then, ‘Oh, I don’t want tax increases,’ like, well, you have to negotiate that with the Senate anyway,” she said.
Comstock, Riggleman and Troye also delivered a Virginia-centric argument to pitch for Republicans, focused on Jan. 6, the threat of national security and the desire for job security for the thousands of federal employees and contractors who work for agencies surrounding D.C. The speakers pointed to policies in Project 2025 that, if enacted under Trump, would seek to reclassify thousands of jobs to political appointments.
“My neighbor JD Vance has also said before that he wants to fire every civil servant,” Troye said. “Those are his words. Virginia’s economy would suffer tremendously, and Virginians would lose their jobs, their health care and their benefits.”
That argument may not be salient in any battleground state beyond Virginia. But to Riggleman, it’s all about meeting Republicans where they are. Even if they can’t hold their nose and vote for Harris, his mission in the coming weeks is to at least get them to leave the box blank.
“They’re not going to vote for her either? Awesome. If that’s where you’re at, I don’t get it completely. But you know what? I love it. Go forth and don’t vote for Trump,” he said.
“I know there’s the saying that ties are like kissing your sibling or whatever, but you know, I’d rather that than somebody voting for Trump just because they believe the propaganda about Harris,” he said.
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Katherine Swartz is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.