Harris packs first rally as Trump retools for new opponent (2024)

To a roaring crowd of thousands in this Milwaukee suburb, Harris moved to redefine the November election as a choice between the future and the past, a prosecutor and a felon. “I know Donald Trump’s type,” the former California attorney general said to chants of “Ka-ma-la.” The crowd, so large that organizers said they had to move the rally to a larger venue, also made a chorus out of her pledge: “We are not going back.”

She arrived in this pivotal swing state with a stacked lineup of Democratic officials, embodying how the party has rapidly coalesced behind her candidacy since President Biden withdrew Sunday and backed her as his successor. Biden plans to give a speech Wednesday to elaborate on his decision to step aside, which followed weeks of pressure and panic from Democrats fearing his deficit in polls as well as fundraising becoming insurmountable.

One of the first national surveys conducted since the switch showed a tight race, with Harris at 44 percent to Trump’s 42 percent, according to a Reuters-Ipsos poll. The same survey put Trump at 43 percent and Biden at 41 percent before the latter bowed out.

Putting Harris at the top of the ticket had an immediate impact on the money front, with the campaign saying it collected a record $100 million from more than 1 million individual donors in barely 24 hours. The campaign also said it recruited 58,000 new volunteers as the operation revised its name to “Harris for President,” even as staff continued using Biden’s email addresses.

“The name has changed at the top of the ticket, but the mission hasn’t changed at all,” Biden said in a Monday night call at an all-staff meeting in Wilmington, Del. “Trump is still a danger to the community. He’s a danger to the nation.”

Biden’s endorsem*nt of his vice president was quickly met with statements of support from other prominent Democrats who had been holding off as his prospects seemed to crater; their enthusiasm cleared her path to a nomination by default next month rather than a rushed and messy mini-primary at the party’s national convention.

By late Monday, Harris had secured enough pledges from delegates to clinch the nomination, according to a survey of delegates by the Associated Press. Her dominance expanded Tuesday with a nod from the two top congressional Democrats, Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.).

The Trump campaign, in turn, signaled that it will attack Harris by tying her to Biden’s record on core issues of inflation, crime and immigration. The campaign also started pressing to expand the battleground map. It announced a rally with him and running mate J.D. Vance, Ohio’s junior senator, for Saturday in Minnesota, which has voted Democratic in every presidential election since 1972.

“The Democrats deposing one Nominee for another does NOT change voters discontent over the economy, inflation, crime, the open border, housing costs not to mention concern over two foreign wars,” Trump pollster Tony Fabrizio said in a memo released Tuesday. “Before long, Harris’ ‘honeymoon’ will end and voters will refocus on her role as Biden’s partner and co-pilot.”

Trump counterprogrammed Harris’s debut event by hosting a conference call with reporters to hammer on her role overseeing the current administration’s response to surges of undocumented migrants on the U.S.-Mexico border. He described Harris as “the same as Biden but much more radical” and predicted she would be easier to beat.

He committed to debating Harris and said he’d be open to multiple faceoffs. At the same time, he objected to the choice of moderator of ABC News, which is set to host the next debate in September.

Trump has brooded over how the race was suddenly upended. In a flurry of social media posts Monday, he complained that Republicans had already invested in running against Biden, attacked him as much as Harris, complained about Democratic guests on Fox News and denied ever considering JPMorgan chief executive Jamie Dimon for a cabinet post, as he floated in a June interview.

Vance held his first solo rallies Monday in Ohio and Virginia, assailing Biden as a “quitter” and Harris as “a million times worse” for the role she has served in the administration.

Trump is planning campaign stops in Charlotte on Wednesday and two days later will headline a conference in West Palm Beach, Fla., hosted by the right-wing group Turning Point Action.

In the environs of Milwaukee — the same city where Republicans held their national convention this month — a huge crowd packed into a suburban high school gymnasium in advance of Harris’s Tuesday afternoon appearance, hoisting letters spelling out “YES WE KAM!” Harris arrived to boisterous applause and an equally boisterous introduction by Gov. Tony Evers (D).

“On the Tony Evers excitement scale that goes from ‘holy mackerel’ and maxes out at ‘heck yes,’ I am jazzed as hell to be welcoming our next presidential nominee to Wisconsin,” the dispositionally low-key governor said.

Harris took the stage to the tune of Beyoncé’s “Freedom.” In 20 minutes of remarks, she warned of the policy blueprint from Trump allies known as Project 2025. The initiative proposes limiting access to abortion medication and blocking its distribution through the mail. It also proposes expanding the role of private plans in Medicare and repealing government drug price negotiations. It does not, as Harris claimed, propose cutting Social Security.

“We know we got to take this seriously,” she said. “And can you believe they put that thing in writing?”

Trump campaign senior adviser Chris LaCivita reiterated that the former president has distanced himself from Project 2025 and criticized Harris’s past support for Democrats’ program to reduce greenhouse gases and invest in renewable energy. The Green New Deal, he said, is “dangerously liberal.”

Some of the biggest applause lines at Harris’s Milwaukee-area rally had to do with abortion rights, an issue she was already prioritizing on behalf of President Biden before he dropped his reelection bid. “We’ll stop Donald Trump’s extreme abortion bans because we trust women to make decisions about their own body and not have their government tell them what to do,” she said to sustained cheers.

Harris also pointed to her background as a prosecutor, repeating a line that she previewed in Monday remarks to campaign staff. “I took on perpetrators of all kinds,” she said. “Predators who abused women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain. So hear me when I say: I know Donald Trump’s type.”

At the mention of his name, the gym of West Allis Central High School resounded with chants of “lock him up!” — an echo of the chant heard for years at Trump events when he talked about former secretary of state Hillary Clinton.

Many who turned out to hear her lauded Biden’s decision to step aside and said they believed she will be a stronger candidate against Trump.

“I think he did the best thing for everybody, and she’s amazing,” said Tammy Calnon, 50, a project manager from Sussex, Wis., who supported Harris’s primary campaign in 2020 and expects her to better outline the differences between Democrats and Trump than Biden had been doing.

For women and women of color in attendance, the candidate’s sudden elevation is especially meaningful. Sukanya Misra, 39, a writer from Milwaukee, is fully embracing her ascent: “I did not think that a woman of Indian descent would ever be a serious contender for the highest office in America. It makes me emotional thinking about it.”

Yet some women expressed concern about the sexism and racism they expect Harris to face.

“I know that the Republicans are going to pivot from ageism to sexism and racism in their attacks, but I think she’s got tough skin and she can deal with it,” said Anne Matthews, 56, a physician assistant from Menomonee Falls who pointed to particular aspects of Harris’s résumé. “I like that she’s a previous prosecutor who has prosecuted sexual offenders, and she’s going to be running against someone who’s been convicted of that. I think we need a new face, and I like her energy and everything about her.”

Trump won Wisconsin in 2016, but Biden flipped it back to blue in 2020 and his campaign leadership argued that wins in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan were the clearest path to victory in the electoral college this fall.

In recent public polling, however, the president trailed Trump here. An AARP poll this month found Biden down six points to Trump in a five-way race that included third-party candidates Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Cornel West and Jill Stein. A Times-Say24 poll released last week found Biden down five points in the state in a five-way race.

Linda Barikmo, who wore a Hillary Clinton pin to Tuesday’s event, said she had lost faith in Biden’s ability to win this fall after his dismal debate performance last month.

“I really believe there is a chance now,” said Barikmo, 69, a retired global supply chain account director from the Milwaukee suburb of Wauwatosa. “I was really almost resigned — not to give up, but just that there can’t be a chance. … The family texts started the minute he said he was endorsing her and have not stopped. I’ve got kids that live across the country, and we are just giddy about this.”

Patrick Svitek, Amy B Wang and Michael Scherer contributed to this report.