Rich Logis was a “die-hard” independent — disillusioned with U.S. politics and the two-party system — when he threw himself into the MAGA movement.
Seeing Donald Trump as a “maverick,” the 47-year-old business owner from Delray Beach, Fla., volunteered to write scripts for Trump’s voter outreach calls. He became a “MAGA pundit,” writing articles for the Daily Caller and the Federalist and started a podcast that billed itself to Democrats and moderate Republicans as “dangerous and inappropriate.”
But on Monday night in a video, Logis addressed the Democratic National Convention. “I finally stepped outside the MAGA echo chamber,” he said. “I stopped listening to what Trump said, and looked around with my own eyes, and I realized he had been lying about pretty much everything.”
Logis is one of a number of Republicans lining up to speak out against Trump at the DNC this week.
John Giles, the Republican mayor of Mesa, Ariz., told the crowd Tuesday night that he felt a little out of place at a convention full of Democrats.
“But I feel more at home here than in today’s Republican Party,” he said. “The Grand Old Party has been kidnapped by extremists and evolved into a cult.”
Giles said he had an urgent message for the majority of Americans who feel in the political middle.
“John McCain’s Republican Party is gone, and we don’t owe a damn thing to what’s been left behind,” he said. “So let’s turn the page. Let’s put country first.”
Stephanie Grisham, a former Trump White House press secretary, told delegates Tuesday night that she would be voting for Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.
Referring to her former boss, Grisham said, “I saw him when the cameras were off. Behind closed doors, Trump mocks his supporters — he calls them ‘basement dwellers.’ On a hospital visit one time, when people were dying in the ICU, he was mad that cameras were not watching him. He has no empathy. No morals. And no fidelity to the truth.”
Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois — one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump on a charge of inciting the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol — also is scheduled to address the DNC this week along with Georgia’s former Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan and Olivia Troye, a former Trump White House national security official.
Facing a tight election — national polling averages compiled by FiveThirtyEight.com show Harris leading by 2.9 percentage points over Trump — Democrats are hoping they can persuade disenchanted Republicans in battleground states not only to refrain from voting for Trump, but to vote for Harris.
In June, President Biden’s campaign hired a national director of Republican outreach: Austin Weatherford, Kinzinger’s former chief of staff. This month, he launched Republicans for Harris, a program that encourages high-profile Republicans to make the case for Harris, creating a “permission structure” for GOP voters who have qualms about voting for a California Democrat.
“We are here to be a part of a campaign within a campaign to build a coalition of Republicans speaking to Republicans about Trump’s unfitness to serve.” Weatherford told a recent virtual meeting of Republicans for Harris.
“We might not agree on every issue with Harris, but one thing is clear: She takes the time to listen and learn all sides of an issue,” he said, noting that Harris had supported an immigration bill that Trump pressured GOP lawmakers to kill.
Republicans across the country have recorded testimonials for Republican Voters Against Trump, a $50-million advertising campaign running across all the swing states. Among them is a man from Antioch, Calif., identified only as “Jeff.”
“I’m a lifelong Republican. I’m a former Trump voter, and I will not be voting for Donald Trump in 2024,” Jeff said in his testimonial video. “Donald Trump has nothing but contempt for the American people.”
Logis, in his video, said he began to have doubts when the former president made false claims of voter fraud after losing the 2020 election and inspired a mob to storm the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ handling of the COVID-19 pandemic made him rethink his support of Republicans.
“I made a grave mistake, but it’s never too late to change your mind,” said Logis, who now leads a “Leaving MAGA” group for former Trump supporters. “You don’t need to agree with everything you hear tonight to do what is right.”
This is not the first time Republicans opposed to Trump have spoken at the DNC.
Four years ago, former Secretary of State Colin Powell supported Joe Biden. “Today, we are a country divided, and we have a president doing everything in his power to make it that way and keep us that way,” Powell said of then-President Trump in a video recorded for the convention. “What a difference it will make to have a president who unites us, who restores our strength and our soul.”
John Kasich, the former GOP Ohio governor who challenged Trump for the 2016 nomination, also pledged his support for Biden then. “I’m a lifelong Republican,” Kasich said. “But that attachment holds second place to my responsibility to my country.”
Many Republicans who are pledging to vote for Harris acknowledge differences on some issues.
“I didn’t jump ship because I’m fully head over heels for Democratic policies,” Duncan, the former Georgia lieutenant governor, told the Los Angeles Times. ”I jumped ship because I just could not imagine as an American casting a vote for somebody as villainous and crooked as Donald Trump is.”
Working with the Democrats and Harris, Duncan said, he would try to bring American politics more toward the middle.
“I feel like there is a gravitational pull to the center on some of these issues,” Duncan said. “Not all of them — this isn’t turning all Democrats into Republicans. But just governing more towards the middle, I think that’s an extremely healthy step for this country at this point in time.”
Duncan’s support for Biden and Harris has angered many Georgia Republicans. Even though some of the state’s GOP leaders, including Gov. Brian Kemp, have a strained relationship with Trump, they have sought to focus on GOP unity.
Some Republicans have urged disenchanted conservatives and evangelicals to show up at the polls and leave the line blank rather than vote for Harris.
“Voting for Kamala Harris to stop Trump or save conservativism only tells Democrats that they need to do nothing to earn your vote,” Erick Erickson, a conservative radio talk show host and former Never Trumper, wrote last week.
“Good stewardship often does not mean choosing between the evils of two lessers, but of opting out of choosing evil altogether,” he added.
