WASHINGTON: Republican leaders are warning their members to refrain from making overtly racist and sexist attacks on Vice President Kamala Harris, a move that comes as Republican leaders and former President Donald Trump’s campaign struggle to adjust to the reality of a new Democratic challenger four months before Election Day.
In a closed-door meeting of House Republicans on Tuesday, Rep. Richard Hudson, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, urged lawmakers to focus their criticism on Harris’s role in the Biden-Harris administration’s policies.
“This election is about policy, not individuals,” House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters after the meeting.
“This is not a personal issue with Kamala Harris,” he added. “Her ethnicity and gender have absolutely nothing to do with this.”
The warning points to a new risk for the Republican running against the Democrat, who would be the first woman, the first black woman and the first South Asian to enter the White House. Trump, in particular, has a history of racist and misogynistic attacks that could alienate key groups of voters, including suburban women, voters of color and the younger generation that Trump’s campaign has courted.
The warning comes after some lawmakers and Trump associates began to view Harris, a former district attorney, attorney general and senator, as a “DEI” hire, short for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Initiative.
“Intellectually, she’s really rock bottom,” Wyoming Rep. Harriet Hagerman said in a TV interview. “I think she’s a DEI hire. And that’s what we’re looking at, and I don’t think they’ve hired anybody else.”
Since Biden announced he was stepping down from the campaign, Republicans have mounted a long line of attacks on Harris, including attempts to tie her to some of Biden’s most unpopular policies, including the economy and her handling of the southern border. Trump campaign officials and other Republicans have accused Harris of complicity in covering up Biden’s health problems and have dug into her record as a prosecutor in California in an attempt to portray her as soft on crime.
Johnson said both Trump and Harris have a track record of White House policy, and voters can compare how their families were doing under the Trump administration with how their families are doing under the Biden administration.
“She is a co-owner, co-author and co-conspirator in all the policies that got us into this mess,” Johnson said.
Biden announced on Sunday that he was withdrawing from the race. In a memo on the race Tuesday, Trump pollster Tony Fabrizio argued that the fundamentals of the campaign have not changed now that Harris is increasingly likely to be the Democratic nominee.
“Even if Democrats swap one candidate for another, voters’ discontent over the economy, inflation, crime, open borders, housing costs, and two foreign wars will not change,” he wrote. “More importantly, voters will also learn about Harris’s dangerously progressive record before they become Biden’s partner.”
Hudson had a similar message at Tuesday’s meeting, telling members that the NRCC was focusing on the idea that Harris is far more progressive than Biden and essentially “owns” all of the administration’s policies, according to a person familiar with the conversation and who was granted anonymity for the discussion.
Sen. Steve Daines, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, echoed the criticism, calling Harris “too liberal.”
“She’s not an Irish Catholic kid who grew up in Scranton. She’s a San Francisco liberal,” Daines said.
President Trump made similar claims in a call with reporters on Tuesday.
“She's like Biden, but she's much more radical. She's a radical leftist, and this country doesn't want the radical leftist destroying the country. She's much more radical than Biden,” he said.
“So I think she’ll have an easier time than Biden, who was a little bit more mainstream, but not by much,” he added.
In a later Newsmax interview, Trump claimed Harris had “destroyed the city of San Francisco,” but she left her job as district attorney there in 2011 and called her “the worst in every way.”
“Kamala Harris is just as weak, failed, and incompetent as Joe Biden — and she’s also dangerously liberal,” the Trump campaign said in a statement. “Not only will Kamala have to defend her support for Joe Biden’s failed agenda over the past four years, she will also have to answer for her own horrific criminal record in California.”
Trump has a long history of making particularly virulent and personal attacks on women, including former Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly, his 2016 primary opponent Carly Fiorina, and New York Attorney General Letitia James, who successfully sued Trump and his businesses for fraud.
In a sign of things to come, Trump criticized Harris’ poor performance in the 2020 Democratic primary in a July 4 message on the Truth Social network, adding, “That doesn’t mean she’s not a ‘very talented’ politician! Just ask her mentor, the great Willie Brown of San Francisco.” Harris dated Brown in the mid-1990s.
Stephanie Grisham, who ran the 2016 presidential campaign, said Trump was particularly offended by strong, intelligent women who attacked him. She served as Trump’s White House press secretary until she cut ties with him after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
“She’s going to be absolutely furious with him,” Grisham predicted, adding that when Trump is attacked, “he’s going to punch 1,000 times harder. He’s not going to be able to help himself.”
As for women, she added: “His struggle is attacking their appearance and calling women dumb. That's his struggle, and I don't expect this to be any different.”
Rep. Maxine Waters of California, a prominent member of the Black Congressional Bloc and one of the early Democrats to stand up to Trump, said she was bracing herself for what might happen next as Republicans pivoted their campaign to Harris.
“The first thing I think about is the attacks coming from Trump, the MAGA right. It’s already started,” Waters told the AP. “They’re going to be vicious. They’re going to be bad.”
She predicted that such an approach could backfire on Trump.
“The danger is that he could be so arrogant and self-important that he could trample on women, and that could backfire,” she said.
If President Trump were to push ahead with a debate with Harris, as he said Thursday, the dynamics on the debate stage could become even more heated.
Republican pollster Neil Newhouse said Trump is unlikely to debate Harris in the same way he debated Biden, or in the same way he debated Democrat Hillary Clinton, another female contender in 2016.
“I don’t think Trump can approach a debate with Kamala Harris with the same tone that he approached a debate with Hillary Clinton. Kamala Harris doesn’t have the negativity that Hillary had, and she’s a relatively new face in politics,” he said. “There may be a need for caution.”
