FILE PHOTO: Democratic American presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden speaks during a campaign on March 9, 2020 in Detroit, Michigan, USA. REUTERS / Brendan McDermid
Members of the group said Michigan’s major battleground, led by the latest Republican to oppose President Donald Trump’s re-election, also includes current and former Republicans, which will help decide the outcome of the November 3 election.
The group called ‘Republicans and Independents for Biden’ is headed by former New Jersey Republican Governor Christine Todd Whitman, who has become one of Trump’s fiercest critics and who spoke at the recent Democratic National Convention in support of Biden was.
“Biden is a decent man, he’s a steady man,” Whitman told Reuters. “Trump is trying to portray Joe Biden’s world as horrifying – but now Trump has America.”
He accused Trump of betraying Trump by undermining the rule of law and national security, lying, dividing Americans by racial lines, and failing the country in reaction to the coronovirus epidemic.
Weld, a former Massachusetts governor, briefly and unsuccessfully challenged Trump in the 2020 Republican nomination contest. Another prominent member of the group is Rick Snyder, a two-term governor of Michigan who stepped down in 2019.
Snyder said that Trump’s divisive and threatening tactics he said, “When I was the governor, who was working with Biden and Donald Trump, I believe Biden to put our country back on a positive path Is the obvious choice. ”
Whitman, who led the Environmental Protection Agency under Republican President George W. Bush, said the group would target voters in a handful of battlegrounds, particularly suburban women and voters who don’t like Trump but still Biden is hesitant to return.
The group launched a website on Thursday and plans to campaign in state and national media, buy ads and hold opinion pieces in support of Biden.
“Donald Trump’s daily attacks on our nation’s founding principles pose a potential threat to the future of the Republic,” the group will declare.
effect
The impact of this unprecedented campaign by members of a political party opposing their own run for re-election as president remains to be seen. Polls show that Trump still has about 90 percent approval among Republican ranks and file.
Trump’s other opposing groups include 43 alumni for Biden, including hundreds of officials serving as Bush’s 43rd president; Former Republican National Security Officer for Biden; And The Lincoln Project, founded by Republican political operatives.
Communications director for Trump’s campaign, Tim Murto, said the president has unprecedented support among “real Republican voters”.
“Joe Biden has failed at the Washington Swamp for half a century, so it shouldn’t surprise anyone when the Swamp creatures gather to save one of their own,” he said.
Biden’s campaign is trying to form a broad coalition of liberals, moderate Republicans and independents. When he accepted the Democratic nomination at the convention in August, Biden said that if he is elected, he will be president for all Americans, not just the Democratic base.
Whitman is affiliated with the group and will be funded by The Lincoln Project, which raised about $ 20 million by the end of June, according to filings with the Federal Election Commission.
Its members come from around the country, but about a fifth is from Michigan, which Trump won in 2016 by less than one percentage point. They include former US Republican congressmen Joe Schwaz and Dave Trott, and former Republican state representatives Doug Hart and David Maturen.
Reporting by Tim Reid, editing by Sooyong Kim and Sonya Hepavist
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