Republicans target Kamala Harris’ ‘California-ness.’ Do swing state voters care?

A pair of ceiling fans spun lazily inside the jam-packed hangar as the sun blazed down on thousands of supporters outside. As the crowd of 15,000 — the largest of the 2024 Democratic presidential campaign — waited for Vice President Kamala Harris, some began to faint.

That didn’t stop the supporters from bursting into waves of deafening cheers that lasted two minutes as Harris took the stage. It was what her new running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, called a “warm Midwestern welcome.”

“OK, come on, we’ve got business to handle,” she finally said.

The rally outside Detroit on Wednesday afternoon marked the third stop on a five-day, cross-country tour to woo voters in battleground states, which began in Pennsylvania when Harris introduced Walz as her vice presidential pick. The duo plan events in North Carolina and Georgia before rallies tonight in Arizona and Saturday in Nevada. The Harris campaign has jolted the Democratic base in the three weeks since President Joe Biden dropped out and endorsed her, bringing in record amounts of money and drawing massive audiences.

Although California has sent three Republicans to the White House, it has never produced a Democratic president. Several tried — including former Gov. Jerry Brown, whom critics nicknamed “Governor Moonbeam,” and Harris herself in 2019. Some political strategists blame the sorry track record in part on the Golden State’s liberal image.

Can Harris finally break through in 2024?

To reach the White House, she may need to overcome any California-ness qualms, and must aggressively defend her California record against intense attacks from former President Donald Trump’s campaign. In a new 1-minute ad released Thursday, Harris leaned heavily into her Oakland upbringing and her California prosecutor career. She also agreed to the first debate with Trump, on Sept. 10.

Harris’ California roots are already under attack. Labeling her as a “California radical” and “San Francisco liberal,” Republicans have hammered her stances, particularly on crime and immigration. Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, the GOP nominee for vice president, is trailing Harris’ travels this week and holding press events to criticize her. Trump told reporters at Mar-a-Lago on Thursday: “She destroyed the state of California along with Gov. Gavin Newscum,” he said, using his pejorative for Newsom.

Harris has backed away from some of her more liberal campaign promises from 2019 and no longer supports a fracking ban or a single-payer health care system. But she must also navigate criticism from progressive Democrats, who want her to go further than Biden on abortion and climate policies.

Vice President Kamala Harris during a “Get Out the Vote” rally in Los Angeles, on Nov. 7, 2022.

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Jae C. Hong

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AP Photo

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Her California ties have given some undecided voters pause, but those connections are likely not the deciding factor, according to 20 voters, consultants, officials and political experts interviewed by CalMatters in some of Michigan and Arizona’s most purple districts. And some voters and experts argued that Walz’ Midwestern roots could help balance the ticket.

“People will understand through the Walz lens that Kamala, it doesn’t matter where she’s from geographically,” said Democrat Carl Marlinga, who is running for Congress in Michigan’s competitive Macomb County. “Maybe she says things a little differently, but she wouldn’t have picked a guy like us if she didn’t want to connect with people like us.”

Growing up Republican in Michigan, Michael Taylor knows well a common Midwestern conservative sentiment toward California: His mother often told him the state is a “hellscape” detached from the rest of America, with rampant crime, illegal migrants and unfettered homelessness — even though he said he disagrees.

“There’s a lot of … media portrayal that the West Coast liberals are just out of touch and don’t really know what’s going on in the heartland,” said Taylor, mayor of Sterling Heights since 2014.

His blue-collar city of 132,000 is home to four automotive assembly plants. Thursday, Harris spoke at a Detroit rally hosted by the United Auto Workers, which endorsed her last week, citing her “proven track record of delivering for the working class.”

Sterling Heights is in Macomb County, the quintessential swing county where disillusioned Democrats ditched their party for Republican President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. The county went for Democrat Barack Obama twice before favoring Trump in 2016 and 2020. Taylor, who now identifies with neither major party, supported Trump in 2016 but voted for Biden in 2020.

California is perceived as elitist and progressive and seems distant to a lot of Macomb County voters, sometimes even himself, Taylor said.

“I sense that from talking to Republicans. There’s this conflict between the real America and the America of the little blue islands along the coasts,” he said. “When you talk to some people, they almost act like California is a different country.”

That’s true for Republican Cheryl Costantino, a teacher in Macomb County’s Shelby Township: “To us, California is like its own weird, liberal place where people poop on the sidewalks and live in tents.”

McClellan Grote, a registered independent and nuclear engineer from Gilbert, Arizona, hesitates to vote for Harris. Although he supported Trump twice and still favors his policies, Grote said he must vote against Trump’s vitriol. But he’s reluctant to support Harris, partly due to the liberal image of California and Newsom, who Grote also calls “Newscum.”

That perception represents a “key vulnerability” that Harris must overcome to win moderate voters, said Matt Grossmann, a political science professor at Michigan State University. Historically, Black and female candidates are considered more liberal than white men, he said, and Harris’ history representing a largely Democratic state, particularly in the U.S. Senate, may cement that impression.

Republicans are hoping to cash in on that exact sentiment. In a National Republican Senatorial Committee memo, executive director Jason Thielman deemed Harris a “radical” from San Francisco.

While it’s too soon to tell if those attacks have dented her support, Grossmann noted that down-ballot Democrats in swing states have suffered in previous elections when tied to former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco. “That gives (us) a reason to expect that the same attacks would be successful against Harris,” he said.

The person who may help counter those critiques is Walz, whom Democrats are counting on to help connect with Midwesterners with his rural roots and his background as a gun owner, hunter, public school teacher and veteran. The Trump campaign, on other hand, quickly tried to paint Walz in an emailed statement as a “West Coast wannabe” who wants to spread “California’s dangerously liberal agenda.”

Walz is “a perfect description of a Democrat who could win in Macomb County,” said Marlinga, a self-described moderate Democrat who lost by a razor-thin margin to Republican U.S. Rep. John James in 2022 and is set for a rematch this November.

Marlinga called the Minnesota governor a “positive populist” who is easy-going and approachable. Walz called Trump and Vance “weird,” just like an “ordinary guy … sitting down for dinner at a deli somewhere” would, Marlinga said.

“We like conservation, we like sports, we like fishing, we like hunting,” he said. “We’re not like the Democrats in New York and California, because we’re not here to grab your guns and to change your life and to preach to you about things.”

In the Republican attacks on Harris, her record on crime is coming under intense scrutiny, as she leans into her prosecutor background in contrast with Trump — a convicted felon who was found in a separate civil case to have sexually abused writer E. Jean Carroll.

“She prosecuted sex predators. He is one,” an ad for Harris’ 2020 presidential campaign said.

Republicans are portraying Harris as a soft-on-crime prosecutor from California, especially as San Francisco is now under the national spotlight for its homelessness crisis and retail theft — so much so that even its Democratic mayor, London Breed, is backing a statewide November ballot measure to enhance penalties on petty crimes.

The Trump campaign is trying to associate Harris with previous California ballot measures that reduced penalties for petty crimes and granted earlier releases to nonviolent offenders. Voters approved those measures during her tenure as the state attorney general, even though she remained neutral on them, and her record on crime is more nuanced.

The attack resonates with some Michigan Republicans, including Robert Wojtowicz, who is running for a competitive state House seat in Macomb County.

While courting voters at a Clinton Township polling station on Tuesday, Wojtowicz associated Harris with California’s recent increases in some violent and property crimes, even though she left to serve in the U.S. Senate in 2017. He argued the state’s prosecutors “are not prosecuting … serious crimes,” echoing California conservatives who are advocating for tougher penalties.

Costantino, the Shelby Township teacher, noted that the number of violent crimes in San Francisco rose during Harris’ early years as district attorney. The city’s current struggle with crime is something Harris still should own, Costantino said.

“The fact that she’s from California should make her more sensitive to those issues, not less sensitive,” Costantino said. “Just because she goes to Washington doesn’t mean that she should be removed from them.”

But most of the Michigan voters interviewed by CalMatters spoke more about policies from her time as vice president, not while she served in California. While conservative voters blamed the Biden-Harris administration for increases in gas prices, illegal border crossings and national debt, Democrats celebrated her for advocating for abortion rights — an issue that turned out a historic number of Michigan voters in recent elections and helped flip the state Legislature blue.

And some Michigan voters — both Republicans and Democrats — said they did not know Harris for her time in the Golden State.

Joe Koch is a 58-year-old electric operator and a self-described “Christian conservative” in Clinton Township, where Biden won by less than 1 percentage point in 2020 after Trump won it by 4 points in 2016. He called California a “mismanaged” state, blaming Newsom for the state’s budget deficit. “He’s just a populist guy, good hair, but I don’t see him governing,” Koch said.

But Harris’ California roots are “secondary” compared to her policy stances, Koch said. “She could be from New Mexico or Washington,” he said.

Tamela Washington, a 55-year-old Democratic voter, also does not associate Harris with California. She said she only began to notice Harris when she was in the U.S. Senate.

“It doesn’t matter whether she’s from California, Hawaii, Timbuktu. Doesn’t matter. It just blinds us from … what connects us and what keeps us wanting to make this country just better every day,” she said.

Among Michigan’s Arab community, Harris’ California roots fade even further into the background.

Boasting the nation’s second-largest Middle Eastern population, Michigan is home to Dearborn, the first and the largest Arab-American majority city in America. Democratic voters here, partly angered by Biden’s support for Israel in the Gaza war, overwhelmingly voted “uncommitted” over Biden in the March primary.

During Wednesday’s rally, a small group of pro-Palestinian student protesters from the University of Michigan briefly interrupted Harris’ speech before security escorted them out. They chanted: “Kamala Kamala you can’t hide, we won’t vote for genocide!”

“It seems that the number one driving factor in this race will be the Gaza issue. People are not looking at much else,” said Qarim Abdullah, an imam at the American Muslim Center in Dearborn since 2018. A sense of “betrayal” by Biden’s Gaza policies, he said, has driven some to vote for Trump.

And in Arizona — a traditionally-red Sun Belt state that Biden narrowly flipped in 2020 — Harris’ record on illegal immigration at the border will come into laser focus.

The Grand Canyon State’s border with Mexico makes immigration a top concern among its voters. The state’s GOP-led Legislature placed a controversial measure on the November ballot that would allow state and local law enforcement to crack down on illegal border crossings, even though courts deem it a federal power.

Harris — portrayed by Republicans as a liberal “border czar” lenient on illegal migrants — has gone on the offense, tapping into her background cracking down on transnational gang activities as California’s attorney general.

“In that job, I walked underground tunnels between the United States and Mexico,” she said at a rally in Atlanta. “I went after transnational gangs, drug cartels and human traffickers that came into our country illegally. I prosecuted them in case after case, and I won.”

But on other issues, Harris’ California brand could prove to be an advantage, especially abortion.

Arizona Democrats hope her outspokenness on abortion rights — another proposal that could also land on the state’s November ballot — appeals to independent voters and disenfranchised Republicans.

“She’s always been an advocate for women’s health care, and she’s a woman. She gets us,” Patti O’Neil, chairperson of the Maricopa County Democratic Party, said of Harris.

Harris’ support for abortion rights won over Karla Grote, a developer in Gilbert and a former Republican who re-registered as independent after becoming disillusioned with Trump.

“I don’t hate her policies. I don’t hate her thought patterns. Well, she’s pro-choice! That’s a big one for me,” Karla Grote shouted while talking to her husband at Detroit Metropolitan Airport, waiting for a delayed flight back home to Arizona.

“Anybody miss that?” McClellan Grote asked while rolling his eyes, drawing a few chuckles from passengers nearby.