These Wisconsinites used to vote Republican, but this time they’re supporting Harris

Lisa Roberts comes from a long line of Republicans.

Growing up in Seattle, she belonged to a group of Jewish Republicans, and her grandparents owned a conservative newspaper. She supported Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election. She always thought being a Republican meant supporting limited government, fiscal control and individual personal responsibility.

But when Donald Trump entered the scene in 2016, the party that embraced him — and the party she thought she knew — changed. Trump’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, his relationship with foreign adversaries, his tax breaks for the wealthy, and his character — including his mocking of the late Sen. John McCain, his rhetoric, and the dangerous misinformation he pushes — have all cost him her support. And perhaps most important of all, after the rioting by his followers at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, she thinks Trump is a threat to democracy, noting that he is suggesting he won’t accept the results of the upcoming election if he loses.

“It turns out that a lot of what I thought it meant to be a Republican is not true,” Roberts told the Wisconsin Independent.

Roberts, who has lived in Madison for nearly a decade now, decided not to support any candidate in 2016. She voted for President Joe Biden in 2020 to stave off Trump. But in the upcoming 2024 election, she is among a growing number of lifelong Republicans who are rallying behind Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.

This coalition stretches far, from former Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter, former Rep. Liz Cheney, to former state Senate Majority Leader Dale Schultz and conservative talk radio host Charlie Sykes, to regular voters.

Many of them have said their decision to support Harris and vote against their party’s candidate is to protect democracy. But for some, unlike their support for Biden in 2020, their vote for Harris this time is more than just a vote against Trump. Harris’ policies, particularly on the economy and reproductive rights, plus the renewed love of country they say she has ignited, is also drawing some Republicans in.

“I am so excited about her,” Roberts said. She recently joined a Zoom call with more than 80,000 Republicans from around the country who are supporting Harris, where the energy felt patriotic, like it used to within the Republican Party, she said.

“Not only will we not have to be embarrassed with Kamala Harris, we can have some pride that we’ve chosen a good leader for our country,” Roberts said.

Retired pastor and lifelong Republican Dave Bullock said his decision to support Harris has been an easy one.

The 73-year-old grew up in a Republican family. “I remember my parents saying, ‘Well, that’s just what we do.’ And it wasn’t a whole lot of thought given to it, for me anyway,” Bullock said. Aside from supporting Jimmy Carter in 1976, he has voted for every Republican presidential candidate up until 2016, when he didn’t support either candidate.

He said his chief complaint about Trump is the misinformation he spreads and the impact it has. At his grandson’s birthday party recently, Bullock was talking with people he had known for a long time who believed Trump’s false claims about the government response to Hurricanes Helene and Milton.

“What excites me is [Harris] seems to me to be a decent, normal human being,” Bullock said. “I appreciate that she’s willing to be normal, that she treats people well, that she doesn’t demean people, she hasn’t had bankruptcies, she doesn’t sexually assault people.”

Walking around his neighborhood in Waukesha, a critical Republican stronghold in Wisconsin, Bullock said he’s never seen so many yard signs for Democrats before.

“The number of Harris-Walz signs are huge compared to other years. Never in our area — this is our lily-white Republican area, that’s what we call it. You never saw a Hillary sign or a Biden sign. And there are 76 homes in our area — probably 15 or 20 have Harris or Baldwin signs out front,” he said.

Southeast Wisconsin resident and semi-retired physician Mike Auguston, another lifelong Republican, has been spreading the word about supporting Harris, too. He canvasses for her, saying he can sometimes connect with voters about his own politics. He also created a short film on YouTube about his decision to vote for Harris that he hopes will encourage people to get informed and go vote. The video inspired his niece in Green Bay to donate to Harris’ campaign, the first time she’s ever donated to a political candidate.

Many of the Republicans supporting Harris said the conservative issues they care about and the values they hold haven’t necessarily changed. But they said the election is bigger than any one issue, including abortion.

“That’s not the major issue here,” said Bullock. He’s against abortion but said it’s more a moral issue than a political one, and he thinks this election is about integrity. “The major issue has to be, who is going to lead and who is going to set an example? What do we want as a leader? Do we want somebody who will be normal and be kind?”

“And while Kamala may be lacking in some areas that I would appreciate something else, I find her just head and shoulders above her opponent. And I don’t think I’ve strayed far from where I am,” he said. “To me, there’s no choice.”

Roberts said that while she used to be against abortion, her mind has changed, and she now considers herself “conservatively pro-choice,” or supportive of women having the right to choose, but with “reasonable limits and restrictions.” The issue of reproductive rights was one of the things that first excited her about Harris.

“The fact that my daughter has fewer rights than her mother or her grandmothers is really scary. The fact that women are dying is really scary,” she said.

Conservatives who are casting their ballots for Harris in November know that not everyone in their party feels the same about the election, and that speaking out may not move the needle that much. In Bullock’s neighborhood, with its boom in Democratic yard signs, someone has also been trying to scrape the Harris bumper sticker off his neighbor’s car. While out canvassing on a recent Saturday, Auguston said, he had a civil conversation with a Trump supporter but didn’t persuade him.

“I’m not thinking it’s going to change the mind of any MAGA supporter, but I’m thinking it will give encouragement to others who perhaps feel similarly or are at least inclined in that direction, or even give permission to vote,” Auguston said.

While preparing for the election, they encourage other Republicans or conservatives to get their news from a variety of sources and to do their own research.

“Just try and perhaps reevaluate how you’ve come to support Trump and be open to that, you know, maybe there’s a better way, and that by voting for Harris, you’re not necessarily voting against your Republican values,” Auguston said. “As a matter of fact, I would say voting for Harris is really a vote for your Republican values, at least the ones that you held, that I believe the Republicans hold. Not the beliefs that Trump holds.”