California v Florida: why home states are forming part of presidential campaign attacks
Kamala Harris’s home state is California, and for some voters that is a huge turn off. Around 39% of US residents say California is a model that they don’t want other states to follow.
California is considered as a bastion of the left. And San Francisco, where Harris was the city’s district attorney, is considered to be even more radically left-wing than the rest of the state, known for its liberal attitudes to drugs and gay marriage, for instance.
Harris, like other political candidates, can be framed by their opponents as representing the values or image of their home state, the place where they are registered to vote in the election. In the US, some states have a very specific image, and California and Florida (Donald Trump’s home state) are two of those.
The Republicans have already started to aim part of their attack on Harris, through the lens of California liberalism. Despite her tough-on-crime reputation, a pro-Trump campaign ad released in late July repeatedly labelled Harris a “San Francisco radical” over footage of her championing liberal causes as a California senator and candidate for the 2020 Democratic nomination.
Harris has embraced her California background. Early on in her acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, for instance, she celebrated her upbringing in a “beautiful working-class neighbourhood” in the San Francisco Bay Area.
But she is also aware that the Republicans are using her connection to California as an attack line. So she has been careful to reference her years as San Francisco’s DA, a prosecutor representing the government in criminal cases.
In one speech she described how in that job she “took on perpetrators of all kinds, predators who abused women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheaters who broke the rules for their own game”.
Although originally from New York, Trump’s home state has been Florida since 2019. In the 2020s, Florida became known for “anti-woke” sentiment under Republican governor Ron DeSantis, a legacy that makes Florida the political opposite to Harris’s California.
Trump’s use of Florida as a home state this year enables him to associate with Republican electoral success there as well as using some of its connections to the “anti-woke” agenda in his campaign.
Florida is a state where Republicans attract a considerable Hispanic vote. In 2020, Trump improved on his 2016 vote share with Hispanics in Florida by 12%. This helped him win what had previously been considered a competitive, or swing, state (where both the Democrats and Republicans had a chance of winning).
In both 2021 and 2022,Trump spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, a conference that brings together conservative activists from around the country. It also allowed Trump to use particular lines that he knew landed with Floridian Hispanics.
Trump’s 2022 address stressed the issue of illegal immigration, which 23% of Floridian Hispanics see as the largest national security threat.
Vice-presidential tussles
The home states of the vice-presidential candidates could also be influential this year. Republican J.D. Vance is from Ohio and Democrat Tim Walz is from Minnesota, two midwestern states with different political images.
The midwest is a region with multiple swing states and is therefore extremely important in the election. It contains significant numbers of evangelical conservatives and is famous for communities that rely on manufacturing jobs.
Vance’s state of Ohio shares both of those characteristics, with 29% of its population identifying as evangelical Protestants. The steel industry, which has long been important to the state’s economy and working-class communities, still has operating plants today.
Walz’s home state of Minnesota is also famous for heavy industry, but it differs from Ohio in other ways. Walz governed Minnesota while Ohio was governed by the Republican Party’s Mike DeWine.
Under Walz’s leadership, Minnesota passed a bill providing free school lunches for all school children. This contrasted with the Republican agenda in Ohio, where cuts were proposed to school meals.
Walz’s image as a nice mid-westerner may have contributed to a small Democratic boost in some polls since he was announced as vice-presidential nominee. He has stressed his midwestern values in speeches, talking of his childhood in a small town where everyone looked after their neighbours.
Nevertheless, Walz has been targeted by the Republicans for how he ran Minnesota. Recently, Vance claimed that Walz “actively encouraged” riots in Minneapolis, the city where George Floyd was murdered in 2020.
In doing so Vance attempted to connect Walz with urban disorder and liberal attitudes to protest, messages which resonate with socially conservative midwesterners.
If Trump employs the “San Francisco radical” label successfully, the liberal nature of Harris’s home state could put off some swing voters. On the other hand, Florida’s six-week abortion law and the “don’t say gay” bill could hurt Trump electorally if swing voters don’t like the idea of those policies. Despite the focus on a small number of swing states, the high-profile identities of candidates’ home states cannot be ignored this year.
Thomas J. Cobb does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.