Aug. 29 (UPI) — Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris says in an interview to be broadcast Thursday night on CNN that, if elected, she will appoint a Republican to her Cabinet.
The exclusive interview with Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, is scheduled to air at 9 p.m. EDT. Ahead of the broadcast, CNN revealed that during the exchange, Harris said she would reach out to moderates and independents alienated by the “extremism” of GOP nominee Donald Trump by naming a Republican to her administration.
“I’ve got 68 days to go with this election, so I’m not putting the cart before the horse,” she says in her first in-depth television interview since accepting the nomination. “But I would. I think it’s really important. I have spent my career inviting diversity of opinion. I think it’s important to have people at the table when some of the most important decisions are being made that have different views, different experiences.
“And I think it would be to the benefit of the American public to have a member of my Cabinet who was a Republican,” she says.
Harris and Walz are on a bus tour through the key swing state of Georgia as they attempt to build on their momentum coming out of last week’s Democratic National Convention.
Georgia, reliably a Republican stronghold with the GOP owning all the statewide elected offices, flipped to the Democrats in the presidential election under Joe Biden. Most polls either show Harris neck-and-neck or pulling slightly ahead of Trump in the state.
On Thursday, the Harris-Walz campaign highlighted what it called growing GOP support, including an open letter signed by more than 200 Republicans who previously worked for either former President George W. Bush, the late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., or Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah.
“While Donald Trump continues to attack moderates and independents, as well as Republicans he doesn’t like, the Harris-Walz campaign has made clear that there is a place in our coalition for voters who reject the extremism of Donald Trump and want to put country over party,” a campaign spokesperson said.
Harris attended a solo rally in Savannah on Thursday, wrapping up the bus tour, before visiting the CNN studios in Atlanta with Walz.
Before the airing the interview, the broadcaster also reported that Harris used the airtime to explain how her views on immigration and producing oil and gas via hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, have evolved since her unsuccessful bid for the Democratic presidential nomination four years ago.
She came out against fracking as a climate change hazard in 2019, but by the time eventual Democratic nominee Joe Biden tapped her as his running mate, she had already altered her position and, in fact, later cast a tie-breaking vote in the U.S. Senate to expand fracking leases.
“We have set goals for the United States of America and by extension, the globe, around when we should meet certain standards for reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, as an example. That value has not changed,” she said.