Liz Cheney Tells Abortion Opponents It’s OK To Back Kamala Harris

Vice President Kamala Harris made a concerted effort on Monday to appeal to Republican women in the nation’s suburbs, using former Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming as her ambassador to conservatives during events in well-to-do suburbs of the biggest cities in three important battleground states.

Stumping together in town-hall-style settings before intimate crowds at small theaters in the Detroit, Milwaukee and Philadelphia suburbs, Ms. Harris and Ms. Cheney presented a united front against former President Donald J. Trump — though it was Ms. Cheney who offered the clearest rationale for why Republicans should vote for Ms. Harris.

On abortion rights, national security and foreign policy, Ms. Cheney painted Mr. Trump as irresponsibly dangerous while describing Ms. Harris as the safer, reasonable choice to maintain the stability of the country and protect women’s health.

“It’s not about party, it’s about right and wrong,” Ms. Cheney told the audience in Royal Oak, Mich., in a theater that in past presidential campaigns hosted events for Mitt Romney. “I certainly have many Republicans who will say to me, ‘I can’t be public.’ They do worry about a whole range of things, including violence, but they’ll do the right thing. And I would just remind people, if you’re at all concerned, you can vote your conscience and not ever have to say a word to anybody.”

Ms. Cheney sought to build a permission structure for Republicans to vote for a Democrat as the Harris campaign focuses heavily on appeals to conservative women in the suburbs, whom aides view as a key group of undecided voters in the race’s closing days.

Many of these women have spent years voting for candidates who are far more closely aligned with Ms. Cheney on social and foreign policy issues than they are with Ms. Harris — which helps explain why the vice president mostly repeated her campaign’s talking points as the former Wyoming congresswoman tried to make news with her support.

Ms. Cheney told crowds in Brookfield, Wis., and Malvern, Pa., that Republican laws to sharply limit abortion access since the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade had gone too far.

In effect, Ms. Cheney told Republican women that they could back Ms. Harris with a clean conscience. And her words may carry some weight: In Congress, Ms. Cheney had an A rating from Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, a group that scores members based on their opposition to abortion. She lost her 2022 race for re-election to a pro-Trump primary challenger two months after the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturned the constitutional right to abortion.

“I think there are many of us around the country who have been pro-life but who have watched what’s going on in our states since the Dobbs decision and have watched state legislatures put in place laws that are resulting in women not getting the care they need,” Ms. Cheney said in Pennsylvania. “In places like Texas, for example, the attorney general is talking about suing, is suing, to get access to women’s medical records. That’s not sustainable for us as a country, and it has to change.”

At the Wisconsin stop, Ms. Cheney called the current state of abortion rights in America “untenable.” She also sought to appeal to young parents by suggesting that their children would not be safe to be left with Mr. Trump.

“If you wouldn’t hire somebody to babysit your kids, you shouldn’t make that guy the president of the United States,” Ms. Cheney said.

Ms. Harris and Ms. Cheney visited suburban counties of the “blue wall” battleground states, which are crucial to Ms. Harris’s chances in a contest that polls suggest is essentially tied.

In 2016, Mr. Trump won Brookfield by 20 percentage points over Hillary Clinton. By 2020, he carried the affluent city by just eight points over Joseph R. Biden Jr.

In Chester County, Pa., where Ms. Harris and Ms. Cheney began the day, voters narrowly backed Mr. Romney in 2012, but then Mrs. Clinton won the county by nine percentage points in 2016. Mr. Biden carried it by 17 points in 2020. In between, in 2018, Chrissy Houlahan became the first Democrat to represent Chester County in the House in more than a century.

Ms. Harris has for weeks warned darkly that Mr. Trump represents a threat to America’s standing abroad, but on Monday she let Ms. Cheney make that case for her. Long a conservative hawk, Ms. Cheney said her party had undergone a “dangerous embrace of tyrants” during the Trump years.

“For anybody who is a Republican who is thinking that, you know, they might vote for Donald Trump because of national security policy, I ask you, please, please study his national security policy,” Ms. Cheney said in Michigan. “Not only is it not Republican, it’s dangerous.”

Ms. Cheney also sought to speak directly to women by reminding them of what she called Mr. Trump’s “cruelty.” Asked in Michigan by Maria Shriver, the event’s moderator, what the Harris campaign slogan, “A new way forward,” meant to her, Ms. Cheney pivoted to an appeal to their patriotism.

“If people are uncertain, if people are thinking, ‘Well, you know, I’m a conservative, I don’t know that I can support Vice President Harris,’ I would say, ‘I don’t know if anybody is more conservative than I am,’” Ms. Cheney said, as Ms. Harris let out a laugh. “I understand the most conservative value there is: to defend the Constitution.”

The Harris campaign described the Monday events as “a moderated discussion” between Ms. Harris and Ms. Cheney. They often felt more like episodes of Oprah Winfrey’s old show than the big rallies for thousands that have animated the Harris campaign in recent weeks.

“Let’s not let the overwhelming nature of this strip us of our strength,” Ms. Harris said when asked by Ms. Shriver how she coped with the gravity of potentially rising to the Oval Office.

There was relatively little discussion of the economy, and Ms. Harris delivered lines that result in big cheers at her rallies in a more measured, calm voice.

One exchange in Pennsylvania that did bring the crowd to life seemed to be a surprise to the vice president — when she reiterated a need for a “healthy two-party system.”

“We need to be able to have these good, intense debates about issues that are grounded in fact,” Ms. Harris said.

“Imagine!” Ms. Cheney interjected.

“Let’s start there,” Ms. Harris said.

The crowd burst into applause.

“Can you believe that’s an applause line?” Ms. Harris said, with a slight laugh.