Shawn Reilly, the mayor of the Republican stronghold of Waukesha, Wisconsin, said Wednesday he will vote for Vice President Kamala Harris, adding he is terrified of the alternative should former President Donald Trump win in November.
Reilly has been the mayor of Waukesha, a city about 15 miles from Milwaukee, since 2014 and had been a longtime Republican. But he left the party and became an independent in 2021 after the events on Jan. 6, 2021, at the U.S. Capitol.
He told Fox 6 Milwaukee and The New York Times Wednesday night he found the decision to publicly support Harris difficult, but called his choice a “vote against Trump.”
“The easy thing to do is just not say anything and cast my vote the way I want, but I think we’re at a crossroads now,” Reilly told Fox 6. “I feel in my heart that this is something that I need to come out and say: I am going to be voting for Vice President Harris to become our next president.”
He went on to tell the Times that he was “very afraid of the direction our country will head in if Donald Trump becomes president.”
“I think we’ll be heading down a road of authoritarianism and fascism,” Reilly said, noting he should have endorsed Harris sooner “but it’s one of those things where I’d much rather do it now, even if it doesn’t have as much of an effect.”
AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin
Wisconsin is set to be a key prize on election night as both Harris and Trump vie for a handful of battleground states that will likely decide the outcome of the race in November. Biden won the state by less than 21,000 votes in 2020, although Trump won Waukesha County — the third-most populous in Wisconsin — with nearly 60% of the vote at the time.
Harris has spent much of the past month traveling to swing states across the country and she held a rally in Waukesha on Monday alongside former GOP Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.) in an attempt to woo undecided voters.
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Democrats have said they know the county will likely vote for Trump, but hope those appeals will help carve away some Republican support and deliver the state to the vice president.
“If we invest in this community, we block the Republicans from ever having a statewide victory in Wisconsin, because we’re undermining the heartbeat of the Republican Party in Wisconsin,” Matt Mareno, the chair of the Waukesha County Democratic Party, told Wisconsin Public Radio earlier this month.