Harris Vows to Create Bipartisan Council to Advise Her on Policy

(Bloomberg) -- Vice President Kamala Harris vowed to create a bipartisan council to advise her on policy if she wins November’s election, part of an effort to broaden the appeal of the Democratic ticket by courting independent voters and Republicans wary of Donald Trump.

“I love good ideas wherever they come from,” Harris said Friday at an event with Republican supporters in Scottsdale in the crucial swing state of Arizona. “So I’m going to create a bipartisan council so we can put some structure around exactly this point and do the work that is important.”

The Democratic nominee said that she was talking to her team about the proposal but shared few other details about the initiative. Her pledge, though, is the latest effort by Harris to appeal to voters outside of her party’s base, in particular disaffected Republican voters, with polls showing her and Trump locked in a tight race.

Drawing in traditional Republican voters will be critical to Harris’ efforts to defeat Trump in states such as Arizona, one of the seven battlegrounds likely to determine November’s election.

In an interview with CNN in August, Harris said that she would look to appoint a Republican to her Cabinet. Earlier this month, she also campaigned with former Representative Liz Cheney, a longtime GOP critic of Trump. 

“In order for us as Americans to maintain our status as the strongest democracy in the world we need a healthy two-party system,” Harris said on Friday. And she used the venue for her speech — Arizona — to praise the state’s late Republican senator, John McCain, who Trump regularly disparaged on the campaign trail and in office. 

Polls show a competitive race in Arizona with Harris leading Trump by 50% to 47% among likely voters according to a Bloomberg News/Morning Consult survey from September.

With under a month until Election Day, Arizona is drawing new attention from both campaigns with early voting in the state now underway. Scottsdale, where Harris held her Friday event, is part of the Phoenix metropolitan area — the most populous in the state.

Both Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, and her husband, Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, held campaign events in the state this week. Trump is scheduled to hold a rally in Prescott Valley on Sunday. Trump’s running mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance, visited Arizona earlier this week and the campaign also deployed surrogates to the state as well.

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