Harris hits Trump’s scandals in presidential campaign debut

MILWAUKEE — Vice President Kamala Harris isn’t wasting any time building her case against Donald Trump.

Speaking at a high school on Tuesday, just miles away from where Republicans gathered for their convention last week, Harris leaned into her background as a prosecutor, pitching herself as the candidate built to defeat a convicted criminal. She reused a punchy line she unveiled this week — one that will no doubt become one of her go-tos on the campaign trail — that she knows “Donald Trump’s type,” as chants of “Lock him up” broke out in the crowd.

“I was the elected attorney general, and before that, I was a courtroom prosecutor. In those roles, I took on perpetrators of all kinds: Predators who abused women. Fraudsters who ripped off consumers. Cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain,” Harris said.

“I promise you, I will proudly put my record against his any day of the week,” she added.

Harris’ first campaign rally since becoming the likely Democratic nominee debuted a more youthful, energetic and aggressive campaign, one designed to prosecute her GOP opponent and draw the kind of contrast Democrats widely believed President Joe Biden could no longer deliver. Members of the party would often bemoan the president’s inability to launch a consistent, cogent message against Trump, a messaging breakdown they say Harris is uniquely positioned to mend.

With just 105 days to go until the election, Harris has little time to spare. The coming days and weeks are crucial for the fresh campaign as Harris runs on the accomplishments of the White House, while also reintroducing herself in a new light — as Democrats entrust her as the candidate who can defeat Trump.

More than 3,000 supporters packed a gymnasium at West Allis Central High School on Tuesday, making it the largest event to date for either the Biden or the Harris campaign. “Kamala” signs waved through the crowd as supporters chanted “Kamala” and “I’m with her.” One row of attendees held pieces of white paper printed with bold letters, spelling out “YES WE KAM.”

Harris’ campaign said organizers were inundated with RSVPs for Tuesday’s event, prompting them to switch it to a larger venue late Monday. And inside the arena, multiple attendees who’d been to rallies for what used to be the Biden campaign remarked how different Tuesday’s felt compared with others.

“A crazy level of excitement that I’ve never felt before,” said Lakeia Jones, 45. “It’s history. We’ve never had a woman president — and being Black, we’ve never had a Black woman in history.”

Another attendee, Ahmoni Gonzales, 21, had never been to a political rally before but has watched videos of Biden on the trail.

“Her ability to make an argument is stronger,” he said. “She seems really knowledgeable about what she’s talking about and very confident when she’s speaking.”

The rally lacked specific policy prescriptions but was more about outlining her vision for the future, a Harris aide, granted anonymity to discuss internal planning, told POLITICO. As she has for months, Harris continued the themes of Biden’s campaign — from freedom and democracy to abortion rights — but she will also differentiate herself in how she delivers that message and her vision for her own administration, with specific policy plans coming in the weeks ahead.

Those moves to distinguish, though subtle, were already on display Tuesday. On abortion, Harris said, “When Congress passes a law to restore reproductive freedoms, as president of the United States, I will sign it into law.” Biden, who was criticized for struggling to speak about abortion at times, would only say he would restore Roe v. Wade.

Harris allies note that she doesn’t need to reinvent the wheel, but she will be able to run on the popular aspects of Biden’s agenda while adding her own policy plans in the months ahead.

“It’s a delicate balance. Obviously the Biden-Harris agenda is strong and working for people, she shouldn’t run away from it. But she can build on top of it — what will she center? How will she make decisions? How will she bring more people into the conversations? I expect her to be a bit more progressive and quicker in those decisions,” said Alencia Johnson, a former Biden campaign senior adviser.

When vice presidents run for the top job, it’s not often they’re still working for a one-term president. People in Harris’ orbit say it could produce awkward, challenging moments as the campaign gets underway, particularly when it comes to issues where there’s daylight between Biden and Harris’ policy stances. The most obvious is her view on the war between Israel and Hamas.

“The challenge she’ll have on some issues like Israel is that it’s hard to publicly announce you’d do things differently while Biden is still trying to get hostages out and negotiate peace. But she could say that how she handles it would depend on where things stand in [January] in terms of using additional leverage with Israel,” another veteran Democratic operative close to the White House told POLITICO.

Her allies also believe she will need to spend the coming weeks bolstering her message on the economy and national security, two issues where attitudes around gender can sometimes hamper women candidates. And she’s running out of time.

Harris aides and allies believe she is particularly well positioned to take on the former president, given the months she’s spent on the trail sharpening her message against Trump as a former prosecutor. It wasn’t a major focus for Harris after joining Biden’s 2020 ticket, when the nation was reeling from the death of George Floyd. Now, with Trump at the top of the ticket, running on immigration and crime and as a convicted felon himself, aides believe she is set up to meet this moment and highlight her resume in a way she hasn’t been able to before.

“Who better to take on a convicted felon than a former prosecutor?” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said in an interview.

But as Harris road-tests her message, so, too, is Trump — who agreed Tuesday to debate the vice president , perhaps even more than once. The Republican nominee and his allies have unleashed a torrent of attacks against Harris over the past 48 hours as they search for which ones will stick against their likely new foe — oscillating between schoolyard taunts and yoking the vice president to the crisis at the southern border.

“Immigration and inflation are going to be the two most difficult things for her to separate herself from the Biden administration on, and that’s where Republicans should be focusing right now,” said Jason Roe, a Republican strategist and former Michigan state GOP chair.

As Harris builds her new profile as the likely nominee, some of the rebranding of what was the Biden campaign will happen naturally. Harris, 59, is much younger than Biden and her GOP opponent. Aides have seized on this generational shift, quickly embracing Gen Z memes as they rebranded social media channels. That’s after the Biden campaign was often dragged down by questions about age and mental fitness at the top of the ticket.

Gonzalez, the 21-year-old who attended Harris’ rally on Tuesday, represents a key constituency for the vice president: Young voters who aren’t interested in voting for Donald Trump and don’t have a strong opinion of her up to this point. It gives the Harris campaign a blank canvas to introduce her to key swaths of voters.

John Della Volpe, the director of polling at the Harvard Kennedy School who also consulted for Biden’s campaign, said Harris should lean into some of the president’s policies for young voters, while “emphasizing the urgency and humanity behind them in ways she’s naturally good at — and in terms that young voters clearly understand.”

Tuesday marked Harris’ first battleground stop since becoming a presidential candidate, but her fifth visit to the blue wall state this year. It comes after a whirlwind of a 48 hours and a surge in momentum since Biden exited the race on Sunday, endorsing his vice president. She was joined by Democratic elected officials, including Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers and Sen. Tammy Baldwin (Wis.), who took the stage before her, touting Harris’ prosecutor chops and ability to draw contrasts with Trump, and the importance of Wisconsin to the race.

Harris has raised more than $100 million between Sunday afternoon and Monday evening, with more than 1.1 million unique donors — 62 percent of them being first-time donors, according to her campaign. Late Monday night, she received commitments from enough convention delegates to become the party’s nominee and has repelled any organized opposition so far.

Harris faces a number of important decisions in the coming days, including building out her campaign staff. She announced at an all-staff meeting in Wilmington, Delaware, that both Julie Chávez Rodríguez and Jen O’Malley Dillion will be remaining in their roles leading the team as campaign manager and campaign chair, respectively. But her allies have also approached David Plouffe, former President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign manager, to help run a team of advisers at the top of the campaign, as she looks to build out her own network of trusted advisers.

She must also soon select a vice president to run against Trump and Sen. JD Vance of Ohio. Democrats speculate Harris may pick someone from a battleground state, and likely a white man, to balance the ticket and shore up support in a state where Trump has made gains. Democrats and Harris allies have floated Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona, Gov. Roy Cooper of North Carolina and Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania. Other Democrats have mentioned Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as potential contenders.

Lisa Kashinsky contributed to this report.