Vice President Kamala Harris has sought to project her campaign’s political embrace of the Republican Party, leading to conservative supporters like Liz Cheney and former conservatives like Adam Kinzinger. This led to support from popular Tea Party figures.
Now, Harris can boast the support of a famous former right-wing firebrand who has amplified false claims of voter fraud and once referred to Michelle Obama in racist terms.
Charlie Sykes, a former conservative talk radio host, will host a conversation with Harris and Cheney on Monday in Brookfield, a suburb of Milwaukee. He has probably initiated a bigger political change than Mr. Cheney or Mr. Kinzinger. During his heyday on Milwaukee radio, he regularly suggested that outside, shadowy forces were committing voter fraud to rig local elections, and he occasionally earned the racist nickname “Mooch.” was used to refer to Mrs. Obama. In 2009, he co-hosted an event for the anti-abortion group Wisconsin’s “Right to Life” with Sarah Palin.
Sykes was a reliable voice for right-wing causes in Wisconsin until he emerged in 2016 as a leading conservative critic of Donald J. Trump’s first presidential bid. He was instrumental in the political rise of Republican Sen. Ron Johnson and Gov. Scott Walker, but later fell out with him after supporting Mr. Trump.
More recently, Mr. Sykes wrote a book attacking Trump-aligned conservatives and became a commentator on the political right at MSNBC and the center-right news outlet Bulwark, which he founded in 2018 and left in February. . In 2021, Sykes announced he was no longer a Republican. This month, he said he would vote for Harris.
“There’s a lot of things that I’m embarrassed about, things that I regret now and things that I’ve apologized for,” Sykes said Saturday. “I wrote a book called “How the Right Losed its Insanity,” and I’ve spent more than a few years trying to make amends for much of it.”
Sykes will appear with Harris as her campaign makes a clear appeal to the same suburban voters who once made up the bulk of his listeners. The event, co-hosted by Sarah Longwell, a Republican supporter of Harris, is part of a series aimed at doing just that. But Ms. Harris is also trying to appeal to black voters who have long been the target of Ms. Sykes’ on-air ire.
His nickname for Mrs. Obama was perhaps Mr. Sykes’ most memorable comment. He said so on the air, on social media and in online commentary. In a 2017 interview with Slate magazine, Sykes said the derogatory term was equivalent to “a brain fart.”
“I’m not going to justify it,” he said at the time. “Yes, sorry about that.”
On Saturday, Sykes said he had “deep respect for the former first lady.”
The Harris campaign declined to comment on Sykes’ past comments about Obama, who is scheduled to campaign with Harris next Saturday.
In his book and online and television commentary, Mr. Sykes has criticized other Republicans who have changed their values to support Mr. Trump.
Local Democrats now say they’ve largely put aside their concerns about Sykes and are happy to have him on their side.
“He’s been screaming for 10 years that there was voter fraud everywhere,” said Scott Ross, who heads a progressive group in Wisconsin that has long opposed Sykes. “Right now, mainstream Democrats are supporting him because he’s right about President Trump.”
