Donald Trump says he has not “recalibrated” his campaign strategy now that he’s facing Kamala Harris instead of Joe Biden. But some of the GOP’s leading voices came to Atlanta on Friday with a different message as they sharpened their attacks against Harris and her new running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.
Speaking at The Gathering, an annual conservative conference put on by radio host Erick Erickson, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis tried to downplay Walz’s appeal as a “shtick” that voters will see through.
“He’ll say things like, ‘Well, these Republicans are weird.’ This is a guy that used Minnesota tax dollars to put tampons in the boys bathrooms,” DeSantis said.
DeSantis was referring to a law Walz signed last year that required menstrual products be made available in restrooms for students starting in the fourth grade. Republicans in that state failed in an attempt to restrict the law to female and gender-neutral bathrooms as part of their opposition to transgender policies.
Walz joined the Democratic ticket on Tuesday, giving the Harris campaign a boost of momentum that has tightened the race in Georgia, according to a new poll released this week.
Yet, Trump scarcely mentioned Walz during a news conference Thursday, instead choosing to step up his criticism of Brian Kemp, Georgia’s popular Republican governor who rebuffed Trump’s attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Trump’s refusal to let go of that dispute has some Republicans fretting Georgia could slip through the party’s fingers again, as it did in 2020. It means the campaign will likely have to rely more than ever on surrogates to keep the heat on Democrats, which is what DeSantis tried to do Friday.
Erickson, a former Macon city councilman turned national commentator, greeted the crowd Friday with some welcoming remarks about the direction of the party.
“Everybody on the right, right now, is figuring out what the hell do we actually believe? What are we going to fight for?” Erickson said.
That soul-searching was on full display during Erickson’s 30-minute conversation with former Vice President Mike Pence. The Indiana Republican repeated he will not endorse Trump for president this year, saying he cannot abide what he called the “growing abandonment of our allies on the world stage” and removing a national abortion ban from the party’s platform.
“We can help our candidates at every level by speaking the truth to them, respectfully,” Pence said. “It’s something I’m familiar with. ... I did it for four years.”
The Deep South has been a reliable source of Republican votes, but Georgia has become one of the most important swing states in the country despite its roster of Republicans who run the state and hold majorities in the Legislature.
Georgia is a big reason Republicans don’t have a majority in the U.S. Senate, a fact bemoaned by Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell when he spoke Friday. McConnell noted a number of instances in the past decade where Republicans “didn’t have electable candidate(s) in competitive states.”
“I might mention Georgia, which feels like a red state to me,” McConnell said, adding that “for a variety of different reasons” the state has two Democratic senators.
In recent elections, Georgia voters chose Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock over GOP nominees David Perdue, Kelly Loeffler and Herschel Walker.
“I think it’s the only red state in America with two Democratic senators,” he said.
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