AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Today in Wisconsin, Vice President Kamala Harris kicked off the first rally of her presidential campaign since becoming the front-runner in the race to become the Democratic nominee. Just days earlier, former President Trump accepted the Republican presidential nomination in Milwaukee, and speaking in that same city, Harris said she knows how to take him on in this campaign.
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VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: I took on perpetrators of all kinds - predators who abused women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain. So hear me when I say I know Donald Trump's type.
CHANG: KQED's Scott Shafer was at that rally and has been following Harris since her time in office in California. Hi, Scott.
SCOTT SHAFER, BYLINE: Hey, Ailsa.
CHANG: OK, so you've been in Milwaukee all week. You covered the Republican National Convention earlier. What was it like to be there for Harris' first presidential campaign rally?
SHAFER: Well, I'll tell you it was a very different vibe from the RNC in terms of tone and message and even the music played. You know, when Republicans met, there was a lot of great country Western music. Today it was R&B, some popular artists including Beyonce, Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, Earth Wind & Fire - you know, a lot of energy. And the campaign said that they were really inundated by people wanting to come. So they had to move it to a larger venue - this high school gym where they held it, about 3,000 people in there. And I know that even after moving it to a bigger venue, some people were turned away.
CHANG: OK, so, well, looking at the crowd who was in there, tell us more about who showed up.
SHAFER: It was a very diverse crowd. You needed to have an RSVP to get in. But I saw a lot of moms who brought their kids. There was one woman with two daughters and a son, and her husband were all there. And she said she wanted them to witness history unfolding. There were a lot of Black women, including a contingent from AKA. That is the college sorority that they and Kamala Harris belonged to. And I spoke to one young voter, 19-year-old Rania Edwards (ph), who said she's looking forward to voting for president for the first time.
RANIA EDWARDS: I think that this election is one of the biggest elections in history. It's iconic just being here right now. And I feel like every vote counts. So one less vote or one wrong vote could sway the whole course of history.
SHAFER: And, of course, younger voters were really a problem for Joe Biden, Ailsa, so that's going to be good news to hear people like that at a Harris rally.
CHANG: Let me ask you, Scott, because you followed Harris during her time as a prosecutor in San Francisco, as attorney general in California. How do you expect her to use that experience to persuade voters, especially voters in battleground states like Wisconsin?
SHAFER: Yeah. Well, you know, when she ran in 2019, her slogan was Kamala Harris for the people, in a reference to her role as DA and attorney general. And back then, she called herself a progressive prosecutor, but it was kind of problematic given the environment we were in at the time. There were a lot of deadly shootings of Black folks by police. And so she kind of soft-pedaled that.
But now she seems really eager to lean into it, as we heard in that cut earlier. And she's also, you know, a big advocate for abortion access and reproductive rights. That's a big issue in Wisconsin, which has had, of course, in recent years, a Republican governor and a legislature. So I think that issue was going to resonate with a lot of women voters, especially in the suburbs.
CHANG: Well, just today Donald Trump told reporters that he would, quote, "absolutely debate Harris." How do you think that matchup would look like?
SHAFER: It's going to look a lot different from last month's debate with Biden. She's going to really take it to him. I think she's going to articulate things that they've gotten done, like the infrastructure bill, the CHIPS Act. She's also going to hold Trump accountable for the many things he said and says that are untrue. And she'll, you know, also focus on things like the economy and immigration to the extent that she can but really focusing on the risk to democracy that the Democrats say Trump represents.
CHANG: That is KQED's Scott Shafer in Milwaukee. Thank you so much, Scott.
SHAFER: You're welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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