Geoff Duncan, a Republican and the former lieutenant governor of Georgia, speaks at a Harris-Walz event in Raleigh last week. (Dylan Rhoney/Cardinal & Pine)
Some prominent Republicans have gotten media attention for their support of Kamala Harris, but Harris surrogates say there’s also a sizable number of Republicans who have been hesitant to voice their concerns about Donald Trump in public but are now ready to speak with their votes.
Republican Geoff Duncan was the lieutenant governor of Georgia in 2020, when Donald Trump falsely accused election officials there of rigging the election against him.
It’s part of why Duncan was in North Carolina last week to help get Kamala Harris elected in 2024.
“I’m a lifelong Republican that’s been accused of being too conservative,” he said at a Harris-Walz event in Raleigh on Thursday, but “I’ve got three kids [and] I can’t look them in the eyes and say that I would ever support Donald Trump.”
The soaring enthusiasm for Kamala Harris among Democrats upended the race when she took over the ticket from Joe Biden this summer, but if she wins North Carolina and the presidency, it will also be because of voters like Duncan.
Liz Cheney, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and other prominent Republicans have received lots of media attention for their warnings about a second Trump term and their support for Kamala Harris, but the Republicans for Harris wing of her campaign has grown substantially, fueled far more by local and everyday Republicans who are tired of what they see as Trump’s brand of chaos, divisiveness, and threats to the rule of law.
Duncan was joined by several other Republicans, including former Congressman Joe Walsh, a former Tea Party conservative, who’s headlined much of the Harris team’s outreach to North Carolina Republicans.
“We launched this national effort Republicans for Harris … with an initial phone call of well over 70,000 people,” Walsh said during a press call in September.
“We’ve been blown away by the response in these battleground states,” Walsh said, “and the movement grows and is growing every day in opposition to Trump.”
Walsh and Duncan have consistently expressed confidence that their message was breaking through, and that Republicans who may be hesitant to speak their concerns aloud, were ready to speak with their votes.
Get ready for the “the Whisper Caucus,” Duncan said.
‘We’re embarrassed’
“This is a group that quietly walks up to me … [and says] Hey, I’m a Republican. I appreciate what you’re doing and I’m going to do the same thing,” Duncan said, adding that it happened again that morning at the airport when he arrived in Raleigh.
The big theme among the people who have, quietly, approached him?
“We’re embarrassed,” Duncan said. “We’re embarrassed.”
Embarrassed and weary of Trump’s treatment of women, his willingness to abandon Ukraine in its war with Russia, his unwillingness to commit to a peaceful election, and his constant threats and insults against “the enemy of the people” — a group that for Trump includes his fellow Americans.
“Donald Trump is a liar. And we as Americans don’t gravitate towards liars. We don’t want to live next to a liar. We don’t want to work with a liar. We certainly don’t want to be married to a liar. So why should we ever think a president can be a liar?” Duncan asked.
He added: “We’re tired of going to our churches, our communities, our kids’ games and having to have excuses.”
‘It’s not hyperbole’
Olivia Troye, who served in the Trump White House as a former Homeland Security official and as an advisor to Vice President Mike Pence, said on Thursday that the warnings about Trump’s threat to democracy were not politics, they were literal.
“It’s not hyperbole,” she said.
“I’ve seen Donald Trump’s weaknesses firsthand and the threat he causes. I watched in horror … like all of us did on January 6th, as Donald Trump encouraged these people to storm the US Capitol, in order to block the peaceful transfer of power and put my own former boss’ life at great risk.”
Trump was unfit to return to office, she said, for the same reasons cited so often by many other former members of his administration, including his ex-chief of staff, John Kelly, who said that Trump called US service members “suckers” and “losers,” lamented that he didn’t have kind of generals that Hitler had, and threatened to use the military against protesters.
These are not conservative proposals, Troye said. They are despotic.
“I trained here in North Carolina with the amazing military [at Fort Liberty]. I want you to think about what it’s going to feel like, the moral conflict of serving under Donald Trump, when someday you’re asked to betray your oath to the Constitution, to betray your service to America, and possibly go out into the streets and shoot Americans.”
These were the issues at stake, Walsh said on Thursday. This close to the final vote, it was time to talk principle.
“I don’t give a damn if I disagree with Kamala Harris on a whole bunch of policy,” he said.
“Every word that has come out of Donald Trump’s mouth for eight to nine years has been hate, and fear, and division.”
He continued: “A guy who tried to overthrow an American election, a guy who thinks he’s above the law against the Democratic nominee who will defend democracy, who will abide by the rule of law, and who wants to try and help heal the divide.
“This is such a clear choice.”
@cardinalandpine Former Republican Congressman Joe Walsh, who voted for Donald Trump in 2016, is strongly supporting Kamala Harris this year. “I know in my bones that Kamala Harris in that White House will defend democracy and the rule of law full stop,” Walsh said.
‘You know the right thing to do’
The goal is not just to convince Republicans to reject Trump, the speakers said last week, it’s to embrace, and vote for, Harris.
Harris can restore the values that connect liberals and conservatives: love of country, and a willingness to work together even when you disagree, they said.
“Working with folks on the other side of the issue and the other side of the aisle makes sense,” Duncan said. “It drafts better ideas. It solves more problems.”
So naturally, he said on Thursday, he will not agree with Harris on everything. In another political reality, they might even agree on little.
But the larger ideals at stake in this election shove the smaller disagreements to the side.
“If I’m wrong about Kamala Harris and she ends up governing in this far-left position, then we’re going to have a legislative log jam,” Duncan said. “If MAGA is wrong about Donald Trump, we’re going to have Ukraine’s going to be owned by Vladimir Putin. Western Europe’s going to be threatened every morning they wake up. Our economy’s going to be in shambles and inflation.”
He continued: “To every independent and Republican listening here today, you know the right thing to do now, just have the courage to do it on Tuesday.”
Record-breaking early voting numbers
In-person early voting has been the most popular voting method in North Carolina for several election cycles, but this year, the state blew past the previous record it set in 2020, when more than 3.6 million people voted early in person.
This year, more than 4.2 million people voted that way.
Registered Republicans slightly surpassed registered Democrats in early voting, but unaffiliated voters, the largest voting group in the state, outpaced them both.
Dan Bishop and other members of the Trump wing of the Republican Party have cited those numbers as evidence of an impending Trump victory in the state.
But the numbers should worry the Trump team, not embolden them, Walsh said last week.
If even a notable percentage of these Republican votes belong to the Whisper Caucus, that could make all the difference, Walsh said.
“All of us have been bombarded in every state by Republicans who’ve said quietly, ‘Joe, I’m with her. I just can’t say anything publicly.’ That’s why I believe there’s like this huge groundswell of support for her that the polls just are not picking up.”
If Trump loses, what comes next?
If Harris wins, it means Trump lost, again. He will have lost two out of his three national elections, opening the door for Republicans to potentially move on from a candidate many voters clearly do not want to see retake the White House.
But what will that look like? What is the future of the Republican Party after Harris Republicans rejoin it, no longer having to worry about the future of democracy?
“I was born for this question,” Duncan said when asked by Cardinal & Pine at an event this summer.
“We’ve got to start from the ground up. We as a party, the Republican Party, is completely broken to its core,” he said.
“The lesson to take away is ‘let’s go elect a good person who wants to represent as many Americans as they possibly can,’ and that person is Kamala Harris, and let us Republicans go back to the bunker and reevaluate who we are and what our purpose is.”
He continued: “It’s not to make Donald Trump a god.”
“We’ve got to hit the reset button, and I believe we’ll be better opponents to the Democrats going forward if we focus … on policy empathy and tone,” Duncan said.
Republicans would have to start being a lot more like John McCain and less like Trump, Rob Brown, a former North Carolina director for John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign, said in September
“That’s one of the greatest things that I loved about McCain, is that he didn’t care what party you were in. He wanted good people who cared about our country, who were willing to spend the time, effort, and energy devoted to public service.”
Brown added: “We’ve got a good chance of Vice President Harris being in a position to lead that effort to pull people back in from the Republican Party, to have rational, reasonable differences about policy instead of denigrating one another and creating the divisions that we’ve had over the last eight plus years.”
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