First Lady Jill Biden reinforced the importance of community engagement from volunteers and voters on behalf of the Harris-Walz campaign in Madison Monday as part of her tour in the battleground states ahead of the Nov. 5 election.
During her second visit to the state since August 2023, city and state leaders including Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway and Attorney General Josh Kaul joined Biden at a WisDems campaign office on Madison’s West Side. With just 22 days to go until the election, the visit is the latest effort from the Harris-Walz campaign to win over Wisconsin voters.
“You’ve probably heard all sorts of lies about Kamala Harris, or you might talk to your friends or your neighbors who say ‘Hey, I just don’t know enough about her,’” she said. “So today I’m going to tell you about Kamala Harris.”
Kalina Stevens introduced Biden, a Wisconsin mother raised by a conservative family. She attributed conversations with family and neighbors to why she switched political parties.
“These conversations helped me realize I was far more aligned with the Democratic Party than the other side. It became clear to me that it’s really just common sense,” Stevens said.
Biden, a professor at Northern Virginia Community College, emotionally shared t with the crowd how she told her r class she’d miss a session to attend her sister Jan’s stem cell transplant to treat her cancer, hiding her face towards the whiteboard to collect herself.
“And when I turned back around, my entire class was standing and they lined up and they gave me a hug, one-by-one. At the end of the day, all of us need that community, whether we’re in a blue state or a red state,” she said. “None of us can survive this life on our own.”
Biden also championed abortion rights during the visit and shared the importance this election has on the potential selection of future United States Supreme Court Justices.
In 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and with it the constitutional right to abortion. The decision caused an 1849 Wisconsin law banning nearly all abortions in the state with no exception for rape or incest to go back into effect.
Opposition to abortion restrictions in Wisconsin played a key role in securing Supreme Court Justice Janet Protasiewicz’s victory last April, tipping the Wisconsin Supreme Court to a 4-3 liberal majority.
Just as voters in Wisconsin were mobilized by these abortion restrictions to vote for Protasiewicz, Biden urged the crowd to vote and reminded them what a second administration under former President Donald Trump could mean for Wisconsin by recounting the first.
Biden was met with groans as she told the crowd of the morning after Trump won the 2016 election followed by hums of approval as she urged the crowd to vote early or on Election Day.
“We have to meet this moment as if our rights are at stake because they are,” she said.
Vice President Kamala Harris is expected to visit La Crosse, Green Bay and Milwaukee on Thursday. Yesterday vice presidential nominee and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz rallied in Eau Claire and Green Bay, and last week his wife Gwen Walz stopped in Madison.
