GRAFTON – Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren took Vice President Kamala Harris' presidential campaign to the northern suburbs of Milwaukee on Monday, an area where Democrats have gained ground in recent elections.
About 80 people crowded into the Ozaukee County Democratic Party's small headquarters in sweltering heat Monday to hear Warren's remarks on Harris' planned policies to lower costs and help the middle class and lower costs.
Ozaukee County, a traditionally conservative voting area, has been shifting in a Democratic direction faster than any other Wisconsin county since 2018, the county's party chair Deb Dassow said, citing research from Marquette University Law School poll director Charles Franklin.
Warren touted Harris' pledge to impose a federal ban on price gouging on groceries, enacting a new child tax credit for families with newborn children and offering first-time home buyers help with down payments.
One of the largest rounds of applause came as Warren condemned the way large corporations have gloated during earnings calls about benefitting from rising inflation.
She said Harris would borrow from Wisconsin, which currently has its own laws against price gouging , and take the policies to a national level to bring down grocery costs.
She also said Harris plans to leverage federal funds alongside local communities to help increase the supply of available housing for buyers and renters by 3 million new units.
Warren said Harris has her sights set on private equity, which Warren said has had a hand in "hollowing out America's middle class" by buying up available housing and pricing ordinary people out of buying and renting.
Warren, known for her advocacy on consumer protection, said she sees Harris' campaign as an extension of her own work and feels "at home in this campaign." Warren, like Harris, ran unsuccessfully for president in the 2020 Democratic primary.
She criticized former President Donald Trump's plans for the economy, accusing him of seeking to cut taxes on billionaires and corporations.
"Trump's economic plan is help the rich and the powerful get richer and more powerful and let everybody else in America eat dirt," she told attendees.
She gestured around the room to walls covered in signs for Democratic campaigns around the state and urged work to elect Democrats down the ballot to win majorities in the House and Senate to enable Harris and Democrat to enshrine abortion access in federal law.
Speaking to reporters, Warren acknowledged Wisconsin's role as one of a handful of swing states that could determine the election.
"Folks here in Wisconsin understand that the entire direction our nation takes could come down to what happens right here."
More: As DNC gathers, Democrats grapple with its fall among Wisconsin's rural voters
After the Grafton event Warren was headed to five more state campaign stops, including in Green Bay, Appleton and Door County.
Trump's running mate, JD Vance, will also campaign in the area, with a campaign event scheduled Wednesday in De Pere , marking his fourth visit to the state in as many weeks.
In a statement sent after Warren's event, Trump's Wisconsin Press Secretary Jacob Fischer said, “Democrats conveyed the quiet part out loud today in Wisconsin as they wheeled out radical leftist Elizabeth Warren to stump for Kamala Harris."
"Wisconsinites are sick and tired of the dangerously liberal policies of Kamala and Democrats like Warren," he said. "Today's photo op was a slap in the face to Wisconsin families struggling to make ends meet.”
Trump has a campaign event scheduled Thursday in La Crosse .
Harris held a rally at Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee last week to a crowd of 18,000 while the Democratic National Convention was being conducted in Chicago.
More: Top Democratic Party officials at the DNC heap praise on Wisconsin chairman Ben Wikler
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Elizabeth Warren campaigns for Kamala Harris in Ozaukee County, home of recent Democratic gains
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