HELENA — In the wake of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s pick of Kamala Harris as his running mate, the Montana Republican Party and the state’s top GOP candidate – U.S. Sen. Steve Daines – labeled them as “too extreme for Montana” and “radical.”
Daines also linked Harris, a fellow U.S. senator from California, to his Democratic opponent, Gov. Steve Bullock.
“Kamala Harris is as liberal as they come, and, as a top fundraiser and ally of Steve Bullock’s, if they’re elected in November they’ll be leading the charge for a radical, job-killing agenda,” Daines said in a statement.
Don Kaltschmidt, the chair of the state Republican Party, said Montanans will “overwhelmingly reject the Biden-Harris ticket,” whose positions will “kill jobs, devastate our energy industry, infringe on our Second Amendment rights, socialize medicine and open the floodgates for illegal immigrants.”
Harris is the first Black or Asian-American woman to be named as a running mate for a major party’s presidential candidate.
A spokesman for the Bullock campaign said the governor “recognizes the historic nature of Vice President Biden’s pick” and noted that he and Harris served together as attorneys general.
In response to the Daines comment, Bullock campaign spokesman Sean Manning said Daines “will do anything to distract from his abysmal record, and unfortunately for him, he has to run against Gov. Bullock, not anyone else.”
Harris was California’s attorney general from 2011-2016; Bullock served as Montana’s attorney general from 2009-2012.
