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Amy Fried is a retired political science professor at the University of Maine. Her views are her own and do not represent those of any group with which she is affiliated.
What happened at the end of the Democratic national party convention was rather traditional.
Red, white and blue balloons fell after Vice President Kamala Harris accepted the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. She and Gov. Tim Walz and their spouses stood with hands held and arms aloft.
But while that scene was utterly normal, the convention was different, even unique. No, I don’t mean the rockin’ playlist that accompanied the roll call of the states or the members of Walz’s high school football team who filed onto the stage. The most unusual aspect was how the convention modeled a bipartisan coalition of support.
Now, it’s not so odd to have one person not from one’s party back the nominee at a national party convention. For instance, in 2008, Sen. Joe Liberman, an independent and previous 2000 Democratic nominee for vice president, spoke on behalf of Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain.
But last week in Chicago, multiple Republicans — with backgrounds in federal, state and local government — endorsed Harris and Walz. Some of these Republicans had even worked for Donald Trump when he was president.
Take Stephanie Grishman, a former Trump administration press secretary and one time chief of staff to First Lady Melania Trump. As Grisham explained, she had been a “true believer” who had been close to the Trump family.
But Grisham quit after Jan. 6 after pleading with Melania Trump to try to get then-President Trump to tweet that the violence should stop and being rebuffed. Grisham also saw Trump insult his backers and embrace lying as a strategic practice. According to Grisham, Trump called his backers “basement dwellers” and he told her ‘‘It doesn’t matter what you say, Stephanie. Say it enough, and people will believe you.’” Grisham continued, saying “Kamala Harris tells the truth, she respects the American people and she has my vote.”
Another Republican, Olivia Troye also worked in the Trump White House, but as a national security advisor. In supporting Harris, Troye said “To my fellow Republicans you aren’t voting for a Democrat, you’re voting for democracy. You aren’t betraying your party, you’re standing up for our country.”
Like Troye, former congressman Adam Kinzinger addressed members of his party. He spoke about Republicans’ transformation, saying that, “Donald Trump has suffocated the soul of the Republican Party” as it no longer stands for conservatism but instead “idolizes a man who tried to overthrow a free and fair election.” Kinzinger said he was there to “put country first” and told his “fellow Republicans” that “The Democrats are as patriotic as us. They love this country just as much as we do. And they are as eager to defend American values at home and abroad as we conservatives have ever been.”
Georgia’s former lieutenant governor, Republican Geoff Duncan said that his “journey started to this podium years ago when I realized Donald Trump was willing to lie, cheat, and steal to try to overturn the 2020 election.”
John Giles, the Republican mayor of Mesa, Arizona, addressed himself to Americans like him “in the political middle.” Giles praised the bipartisan infrastructure bill that Joe Biden and Harris passed, a promise Trump never fulfilled. So much was being built in Mesa, a “conservative city,” that Giles was “going to ribbon cuttings every single week.”
Moreover, those Republicans are by no means alone.
The day after the convention ended, White House attorneys who worked for Republican Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush endorsed Harris. Casting the election as a binary choice they said Trump “was disqualified” because he “was guilty of grave wrongdoing to our Constitution, democracy, and rule of law, and who remains unfit, dangerous, and detached from reality.”
And there are groups of Republicans for Trump all over the country, including one in Maine.
Besides rejecting Trump, these Republicans resonated with Democrats’ emphasis on freedom, an opportunity economy, and a strong military and international leadership.
If Harris and Walz can keep this bipartisan coalition together, I believe they will not only win the election, but forge a future that leaves behind the far-right radicalism of Trump and his MAGA movement. That would be a truly historic accomplishment.
