Kamala Harris won't save Democrats, DeSantis says, predicting Trump victory for president
Vice President Kamala Harris won’t be able to save Democrats from defeat in November, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis predicted Wednesday, asserting her liberal stances on a range of issues will push voters to former President Donald Trump.
“Her tenure as VP has been disastrous,” DeSantis told reporters at an event in St. Petersburg.
Democrats have mostly coalesced around Harris to take over their party’s nomination into the November election after President Joe Biden withdrew from the race Sunday. As a Republican, DeSantis said he would have preferred Trump to face Biden but claimed Harris was much more liberal and would fall to Trump in the general election.
DeSantis pointed to the positions Harris took in 2019 while she mounted her own bid for the White House during the Democratic primaries, before eventually joining President Joe Biden’s ticket.
“She basically said have an open border,” he said. “She wants taxpayer-funded health care and benefits for illegal aliens. She doesn’t think you should deport anybody.”
During her campaign for President, Harris released a plan to expand the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, which grants temporary legal status to undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. illegally as children, giving them a pathway to citizenship.
DeSantis also claimed Harris supported “confiscatory” tax increases.
Harris floated a variety of tax proposals during her run for president, including creating a financial transactions tax on stock and bond trades and taxing capital gains at the same rate as income. She also supported tax credits for renewable energy development and, as a U.S. Senator from California, filed a bill to give tax credits to middle class families.
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Topic not brought up by DeSantis about Harris: Abortion
One issue DeSantis didn’t mention was abortion.
Harris has advocated for abortion rights, including during 2023 stop in Tallahassee, bashing the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision the year before to overturn Roe v. Wade. The decision was made possible with the help of three of Trump’s appointees to the high court.
Since getting the backing of Biden and other Democratic leaders, Harris has jumped into the race. She’s highlighted her background as a prosecutor in California and that state's elected attorney general, contrasting it with Trump’s conviction in May in New York on 34 counts of falsifying business records.
“Before I became vice president and before I was elected as U.S. senator, I was the attorney general of California,” Harris posted on X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter, on Tuesday. “Before that, I was a prosecutor who took on predators, fraudsters and cheaters. So I know Donald Trump’s type. In this campaign, I will put my record against his.”
But DeSantis downplayed her record as a crime fighter, noting she supported raising bail money for protesters arrested in Minnesota during the Black Lives Matter unrest in 2020.
And while Harris has received pledges of support from enough delegates to secure the Democratic nomination at the party’s convention, DeSantis suggested Democratic Party leaders could push the nomination to someone else if she stumbles on the campaign trail. The Democratic National Convention is scheduled to take place Aug. 19-22 in Chicago.
“It’s possible that if Harris falls on her face over the next few weeks I think it’s absolutely possible that they go a different direction at the convention,” DeSantis said. “It’s going to be an interesting three or four weeks on the political scene.”
Gray Rohrer is a reporter with the USA TODAY Network-Florida Capital Bureau. He can be reached at grohrer@gannett.com. Follow him on X: @GrayRohrer.
This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis: Kamala Harris too liberal to beat Trump
