AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
In Wisconsin, a growing number of conservative voters do not support the Republican Donald Trump for president. But are they seriously considering voting for Democrat Kamala Harris? Maayan Silver from member station WUWM in Milwaukee reports on how the decision is playing out for some of them.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Vintage...
MAAYAN SILVER, BYLINE: Over plates of salmon and Brussels sprouts, people with a mishmash of political beliefs crowded an elegantly set table at a debate watch party in Milwaukee. As the debate winds to a close, conservative David Irwin shares how he's feeling.
DAVID IRWIN: I find myself disliking her less. She'll take it.
(LAUGHTER)
SILVER: While Irwin has trouble with Harris' economic policies, he's more concerned with Trump's divisiveness, failure to defend allies and his lying about the 2020 election.
IRWIN: I think it would help for me and a lot of other people, if he said that if he lost this election, he would accept it and he would say that, yes, indeed, the United States of America runs free and fair elections, by golly.
SILVER: Irwin was invited here by Craig Peterson. He's a longtime Wisconsin GOP strategist, who's mobilizing against a second Trump presidency.
CRAIG PETERSON: I think many of us still have PTSD of those four years that he was in office, you know, waking up every morning with that pit in your stomach, never knowing what the hell this crazy man was going to do or say or tweet.
SILVER: Peterson now leads Haley Voters for Harris in Wisconsin. The group aims to convince the more than 100,000 voters who voted for former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley or other non-Trump Republicans in the Wisconsin GOP primary in April to vote for Harris. Peterson thinks Harris' debate performance Tuesday made that prospect easier.
PETERSON: She set the table for us. It's very easy for us to make the argument and the point that she is the better candidate, no question about it.
SILVER: A Marquette Law School poll released on Wednesday with data collected from before the debate showed 12% of conservatives saying they would vote for Harris, double the number who said they'd vote for Biden in June. That's not surprising to James Wigderson, a never-Trumper from Waukesha.
JAMES WIGDERSON: I may not agree with any of her domestic policies, but I'll certainly agree with her foreign policy, and she's not going to raise a mob to come threaten the U.S. Senate when she doesn't get something to go her way.
SILVER: Nationally, there's been a parade of Republicans who say Trump is unfit to be president again and who have gone so far as to endorse Harris. That includes former Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter former Congresswoman Liz Cheney and 200 former staffers for other high-profile Republicans.
WIGDERSON: So this - the almost interesting thing about these endorsements is that it's a permission structure.
SILVER: For Lena Eng, who voted for Haley in the primary, the endorsement helps, but the decision is still not simple.
LENA ENG: Policy-wise, I'm not super comfortable with Kamala, but I think she has better character.
SILVER: Eng notes, as someone with Taiwanese parents who immigrated to the U.S. in the 1960s, Trump's nickname for the coronavirus as the China virus or lies about Haitian immigrants eating pets in Ohio are alarming. She describes her own mother-in-law's story after immigrating to New York from China.
ENG: She grew up, and she had to wear a sign that said, I am not Japanese, because of, you know, the - World War II happening. We just, like - the words do matter.
SILVER: Back in 2020, Eng didn't vote for Trump or Biden. She wrote in her pick. She says, 2024 might be the first time she votes for a Democrat. For NPR News, I'm Maayan Silver in Milwaukee. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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