The Abandon Harris movement is throwing its support behind a third-party candidate for the November election, dealing a blow to Vice President Kamala Harris and threatening to siphon away votes in key swing states she’ll need to win in order to secure the White House.
Abandon Harris endorsed Green Party candidate Jill Stein on Monday, criticizing the Biden administration for its response to the war in Israel and its failure to reach a ceasefire deal in Gaza. The endorsement comes on the one-year anniversary of the Hamas attack, which ignited the creation of groups such as Abandon Harris and others that protested the reelection of President Joe Biden or Harris in response to their stance on Israel.
“We are not choosing between a greater evil and a lesser evil,” the group said in a statement. “We are confronting two destructive forces: one currently overseeing a genocide and another equally committed to continuing it. Both are determined to see it through. We call on Muslim-Americans and all those who stand firmly against genocide to vote for the Green Party in 2024.”
The endorsement could negatively affect Harris as she seeks to edge out former President Donald Trump in key swing states, especially as the race continues to tighten in the final sprint to Election Day. The initial Abandon Biden movement helped the effort to cast hundreds of thousands of “uncommitted” ballots in the primary election, raking in more votes than any other Democratic challenger to the president.
The group has shown no signs of slowing down, especially since rebranding to the Abandon Harris movement after Biden withdrew from the race — and it could pose a serious challenge to the vice president’s campaign.
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Harris must also deal with efforts from other groups protesting her campaign, including the National Uncommitted Movement. That group similarly announced it would not endorse Harris, although it said it “opposes a Donald Trump presidency, whose agenda includes plans to accelerate the killing in Gaza” and “is not recommending a third-party vote” as “third-party votes in key swing states could help inadvertently deliver a Trump presidency given our country’s broken Electoral College system.”
It nonetheless gives an opening to Trump and his allies to paint Harris as dangerous with her foreign policy stances, a message they hope resonates with the voting demographics in battleground states that could determine the presidential election in November.