WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris is visiting a swing state for the first time Tuesday after gaining enough support from Democratic delegates to win her party’s nomination and challenge Republican former President Donald Trump, two days after President Joe Biden withdrew his re-election campaign.
As the Democratic Party continues to rally around her, Harris is traveling to Milwaukee, where she will hold her first campaign rally since launching her campaign with Biden’s backing on Sunday. Harris has raised more than $100 million as of Sunday afternoon and secured the support of Democratic officials and political groups.
Tuesday’s visit was planned before Biden ended his campaign, but it took on recent meaning as Harris assumed leadership of her party against Trump and sought to project placid and confidence after weeks of confusion in the Democratic Party over Biden’s political future.
The visit comes a week after the Republican National Convention concluded in the city and as Harris works to hone her message against the GOP nominee with just under 100 days to go until Election Day. Wisconsin is part of the Democrats’ “blue wall” of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania that is key to their 2024 plans.
The vice president gave a taste of the issues that will play a central role in her campaign against Trump during a visit to her campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware, on Monday. She compared her time as a prosecutor to Trump’s capital convictions – “I know Donald Trump’s types,” she said – and presented herself as an advocate for economic opportunity and access to abortion.
“This election will be a stark choice between two different visions. Donald Trump wants to take our country back to a time before many of us had full freedoms and equal rights,” she said in a statement responding to the AP delegate count. “I believe in a future that strengthens our democracy, protects reproductive freedom and ensures that every person has the opportunity not just to get by, but to get ahead.”
“I am grateful to President Biden and everyone in the Democratic Party who has already put their trust in me, and I look forward to taking our case directly to the American people,” she added.
As of Monday evening, Harris, who also ran as a presidential candidate in 2020, had the support of far more than the 1,976 delegates she needs to win on the first ballot, according to the AP count. A delegate contacted by AP did not name any other candidate.
Still, the AP is not calling Harris the recent presumptive nominee. That’s because delegates to the party’s convention in August are still free to vote for the candidate of their choice, or when Democrats hold a virtual roll call before that meeting in Chicago.
The AP count is based on interviews with individual delegates, public statements from state parties – many of which have announced that their delegations are in unanimous support of Harris – and public statements and endorsements from individual delegates.
Harris was joined by key Wisconsin elected officials, including Governor Tony Evers, Senator Tammy Baldwin, Lt. Governor Sara Rodriguez, Attorney General Josh Kaul, Secretary of State Sarah Godlewski and Wisconsin Democratic Party Chairman Ben Wikler, as well as labor leaders from the state.
Meanwhile, Republican leaders in Wisconsin are branding Harris an “extreme liberal” who is out of step with most voters in this swing state.
“Kamala Harris’ support is just as bad as Joe Biden’s,” said Brian Schimming, chairman of the Wisconsin Republican Party, at a news conference before the Harris event at a high school outside Milwaukee. “So they’re swapping one bad candidate for another bad candidate in the hope that the people of this state and this country won’t notice where she actually stands on the issues.”
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AP writer Scott Bauer in Madison, Wisconsin, contributed.
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