Republican leaders urge colleagues to steer clear of racist and sexist attacks on Harris

Vice President Kamala Harris campaigns for President as the presumptive Democratic candidate during an event at West Allis Central High School on Tuesday, July 23, 2024, in West Allis, Wis. (AP Photo/Kayla Wolf)

Washington -

Republican leaders are warning party members against using overtly racist and sexist attacks against U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, as they and former U.S. president Donald Trump's campaign scramble to adjust to the reality of a new Democratic rival less than four months before Election Day.

At a closed-door meeting of House Republicans on Tuesday, National Republican Congressional Committee chairman Richard Hudson, R-N.C., urged lawmakers to stick to criticizing Harris for her role in Biden-Harris administration policies.

“This election will be about policies and not personalities,” House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters after the meeting.

“This is not personal with regard to Kamala Harris,” he added, "and her ethnicity or her gender have nothing to do with this whatsoever.”

The warnings point to the new risks for Republicans in running against a Democrat who would become the first woman, first Black woman and first person of South Asian descent to win the White House. Trump, in particular, has a history of racist and misogynistic attacks that could turn off key groups of swing voters, including suburban women, as well as voters of color and younger people Trump's campaign has been courting.

The admonitions came after some members and Trump allies began to cast Harris, a former district attorney, attorney general and senator, as a “DEI” hire — a reference to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

“Intellectually, just really kind of the bottom of the barrel,” Wyoming Rep. Harriet Hageman said in a TV interview. “I think she was a DEI hire. And I think that that’s what we’re seeing and I just don’t think that they have anybody else.”

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Since Biden announced he was exiting the campaign, Republicans have rolled out a long list of attack lines against Harris, including trying to tie her to the most unpopular Biden policies and his handling of the economy and the Southern border. Trump campaign officials and other Republicans have accused Harris of being complicit in a cover-up of Biden's health issues, and they have been mining her record as a prosecutor in California as they try to paint her as soft on crime.

Johnson said both Trump and Harris have records in White House policy and said voters can compare how families were doing under the Trump administration with how they’re doing now under Biden.

“She is the co-owner, co-author, co-conspirator in all the policies that got us into the mess,” Johnson said.

Biden announced Sunday that he was withdrawing from the race. In a memo on the state of the race Tuesday, Trump campaign pollster Tony Fabrizio argued the fundamentals of the campaign had not changed now that Harris appears increasingly likely to be the Democratic nominee.

“The Democrats deposing one Nominee for another does NOT change voters discontent over the economy, inflation, crime, the open border, housing costs not to mention concern over two foreign wars,” he wrote. “As importantly, voters will also learn about Harris’ dangerously liberal record before becoming Biden’s partner."

In similar messaging, Hudson told members at the Tuesday meeting that the NRCC is focusing on how Harris is even more progressive than Biden and essentially “owns” all the administration's policies, according to a person familiar with the conversation and granted anonymity to discuss it.

Sen. Steve Daines, who chairs the National Republican Senatorial Committee, echoed that criticism, calling Harris “too liberal.”

“She’s not an Irish Catholic kid who grew up in Scranton. She’s a San Francisco liberal,” Daines said.

Trump offered a similar argument in call with reporters Tuesday.

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“She’s the same as Biden but much more radical. She’s a radical left person and this country doesn’t want a radical left person to destroy it. She’s far more radical than he is," he said.

“So I think she should be easier than Biden because he was slightly more mainstream, but not much," he added.

Later, in an interview on Newsmax, Trump claimed Harris “destroyed the city of San Francisco," though she left her job as district attorney there in 2011, and called her “the worst at everything."

“Kamala Harris is just as weak, failed and incompetent as Joe Biden — and she’s also dangerously liberal," the Trump campaign said in a statement. “Not only does Kamala need to defend her support of Joe Biden’s failed agenda over the past four years, she also needs to answer for her own terrible weak-on-crime record in California.”

Trump has a long history of launching particularly caustic and personal attacks against women, from former Fox News host Megyn Kelly to his 2016 primary opponent Carly Fiorina to New York Attorney General Letitia James, who successfully sued him and his business for fraud.

In a sign of what could come, Trump in a Fourth of July message on his Truth Social network took a jab at Harris' poor performance in the 2020 Democratic primary, adding “that doesn’t mean she’s not a ‘highly talented’ politician! Just ask her Mentor, the Great Willie Brown of San Francisco.” Harris dated Brown in the mid-1990s.

Strong and intelligent women who attack him seem to get especially under Trump's skin, said Stephanie Grisham, a 2016 campaign aide who served for a time as Trump's White House press secretary, before breaking with him after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

“She’s going to get a real rise out of him," predicted Grisham, noting that when Trump is attacked, he “punches 1,000 times harder. He’s not going to be able to help himself.”

When it comes to women, she added: “His go-to is to attack looks and to call women dumb. It’s his go-to and I don’t expect this to be any different."

Rep. Maxine Waters of California, who is a prominent member of the U.S. Congressional Black Caucus and was among the early Democrats to confront Trump, said she is well-braced for what’s ahead as the Republicans turn the campaign toward Harris.

“The first thing I think about are the attacks that are going to come from the Trump, the MAGA right wing — that have already started,” Waters told the AP. “They’re going to be nasty they’re going to be bad.”

She predicted that approach might backfire on Trump.

“The danger is that he’s so arrogant and egotistical that he’s going to step on women and it’s going to backfire,” she said.

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The dynamics could be heightened on the debate stage, if Trump goes through with debating Harris, as he said Thursday he would.

Republican pollster Neil Newhouse said Trump was unlikely to debate Harris in the same way he would debate Biden — or the same way he debated another female rival, Democrat Hillary Clinton, in 2016.

“I don't think Trump can approach a debate against Kamala Harris with the same tone that he approached the debate with Hillary Clinton. Kamala Harris does not have the negatives that Hillary had and she is a relatively new political face," he said. “Caution might be warranted.”

Colvin reported from New York. Associated Press writers Michelle L. Price, Stephen Groves and Amelia Thomson DeVeaux contributed to this report.