Harris campaign launches GOP outreach effort, led by former NC Justice Bob Orr
Supporters of Vice President Kamala Harris react to her speaking during a campaign rally at West Allis Central High School on July 23, 2024 in West Allis, Wisconsin. Harris made her first campaign appearance as the party’s presidential candidate, with an endorsement from President Joe Biden. (Photo by Jim Vondruska/Getty Images)
Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign is launching a coalition to organize independents and moderate Republicans and tapping a former state Supreme Court Justice to lead the effort in North Carolina.
Bob Orr, who served on the North Carolina Supreme Court for nearly a decade and was a candidate for governor in 2008, will lead the campaign’s “Republicans for Harris” organization in the state.
The coalition plans to host events, knock doors, phone bank, write letters to the editor and build a network specifically designed to reach independent and moderate Republican voters — across North Carolina, other battleground states and nationally.
“As we approach the final days of this election, there has never been a more important time for Republicans, former Republicans and unaffiliated voters who lean Republican, to come together and put country over party by working to elect Kamala Harris and stopping Donald Trump,” Orr said in a statement.
He said the urgency of the election “requires action from all of us, regardless of party affiliation, to work together to save our democracy.”
Orr served as an associate justice on the high court from 1995 to 2004. He ran for the Republican gubernatorial nominee in 2008, losing a primary to former Gov. Pat McCrory. More recently, he has been involved in North Carolina’s redistricting process, filing a suit against GOP-drawn maps that was later dismissed.
In 2016, when Orr called Donald Trump “a danger to the country,” his credentials as a Republican presidential delegate were withheld. He officially left the party in 2021, and is now registered as an independent.
Harris’ campaign, as it builds on a surge of fundraising and support, argues that Trump’s campaign and modern agenda has iced out scores of Republicans who no longer back him.
Austin Weatherford, the campaign’s director of Republican outreach, said the VP’s team was “working overtime to earn the support of my fellow Republicans who care about defending democracy and restoring decency.”
“The Harris campaign understands the power of showing up, making your case, and earning the support of a voter,” Weatherford said. “That is the backbone of our program: showing up and taking the time every single day to earn the vote of Republicans who believe in putting country over party, and know that every American deserves a President who will protect their freedoms and a commander -in -chief who will put the best interests of the American people above their own.”
The new coalition is not the campaign’s first overture to Republicans disenchanted with Trump.
Earlier this year, it launched digital advertising targeting supporters of Nikki Haley, who unsuccessfully challenged the former president in the primary. (The campaign has pointed to Haley’s 23% support in North Carolina’s primary, which occurred after she dropped out of the race, as evidence of voters’ frustrations with Trump.)
And in North Carolina events, the campaign has prominently featured voters like Scott Peoples, a businessman, longtime GOP voter and Army veteran.
