Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley has a new favorite target: Vice President Kamala Harris.
Ms. Haley is sounding the alarm on the campaign trail that a vote for President Biden is a vote for Ms. Harris, seeing it as a way to tap into the concerns of voters worried about the 80-year-old president’s age and his sidekick’s political DNA.
“If you vote for Joe Biden, you really are counting on a President Harris,” Ms. Haley said in a recent Fox interview. “Because the idea that he would make it until 86 years old is not something that I think is likely.”
Reiterating the line of the attack Wednesday on social media, Ms. Haley said, “There are real questions about Joe Biden’s mental competence and even more questions about Kamala Harris’ actual competence.”
Ms. Harris is the first Black, South Asian, and female vice president.
The 58-year-old has faced a barrage of intense scrutiny over her first two-plus years as Mr. Biden’s sidekick. Critics, including in the Democratic Party, have taken aim at the staffing turnover in her office, and her at times inartful delivery.
Still, there is a budding sense that the Biden administration will start to lean more on Ms. Harris over the coming months as the duo shifts into campaign mode and test-drives her ability to energize the coalition of minorities, women and young voters that have fueled the party’s recent success.
“The management of her so far has been poor by the White House and they are turning the page on that,” said David McCuan, chair of the political science department at Sonoma State University.
Mr. McCuan said the Biden campaign will deploy Ms. Harris to put the GOP on defense on thorny issues related to gender and race.
“I think the vice president will become a focal point,” Mr. McCuan said. “I think the key question is how long that occurs if she is not moving the needle in the way the White House works.”
The world got a glimpse of what the new approach might look like last week, when Ms. Harris headlined a rally at Howard University for reproductive rights. The event put her in the middle of a heated debate over abortion that has favored Democrats in a series of recent high-profile elections.
Ms. Harris is scheduled to travel to Richmond, Virginia, on Thursday to highlight the administration’s commitment to uplifting small businesses.
Ms. Haley, meanwhile, is working off a broader GOP assumption that the longer they can keep the spotlight on Ms. Harris, the stronger their chances are of flipping the White House next year.
Barrett Marson, a GOP strategist, said running mates typically don’t move the needle much in presidential races, but said 2024 could be different given concerns over Mr. Biden’s age.
“The vice president and the vice presidential picks get much less scrutiny than the top of the ticket, but I believe 2024 has the potential to truly elevate the vice presidential race simply because Harris will be seen as not only the heir apparent but potentially the heir immediate,” Mr. Marson said.
“Focusing on the president’s age and the vice president’s California politics may be the best way to blunt Biden’s popularity among moderate Republicans and right-leaning independents who will decide the election in many states,” he said.
For Republicans, that is crucial.
Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel said in a recent Fox News interview, the “biggest takeaway” from the party’s post-2022 autopsy report is “independents did not break our way, which has to happen if we’re gonna win in 2024.”
Ms. Harris’s favorability rating among registered voters is underwater by a 44%-to-52% margin, according to a recent YouGov/ Economist survey. The poll showed that independent voters have an even bleaker view of her, with 31% giving her favorable marks and 61% unfavorable.
Ms. Harris’s office did not respond to requests for comment.
Mr. Biden’s announcement last week he is running has likely frozen out any high-profile candidates from entering the Democratic nomination race, which includes Marianne Williamson, a self-help guru, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
As a result, the prevailing wisdom is that Mr. Biden will swap out his 2020 basement strategy for a like-minded 2024 Rose Garden approach that allows him to lean into the power of the presidency with well-choreographed events highlighting his strengths and downplaying his weaknesses.
If so, Ms. Harris could slide into more of a featured role.
Tim Murtaugh, vice president of communication strategy at the political consulting firm National Public Affairs, said that would be good for Republicans. He is a former campaign spokesman for Mr. Trump.
“Kamala Harris is really bad at politics,” Mr. Murtaugh said, noting that her 2020 presidential bid flamed out before a single vote was cast in the Democratic primaries. “She’s been an even bigger disaster as vice president and her public approval numbers show that.”
“So, it’s good for all Republicans to have Harris front and center,” he said.
• Seth McLaughlin can be reached at smclaughlin@washingtontimes.com.