Vice President Kamala Harris’s efforts to showcase her campaign’s political embrace of Republicans has led to the endorsements of archconservatives like Liz Cheney and onetime Tea Party darlings like Adam Kinzinger.
Now, Ms. Harris can boast the backing of a well-known former right-wing firebrand who amplified false claims of voter fraud and once referred to Michelle Obama in racist terms.
Charlie Sykes, the former conservative talk-radio host, is scheduled to moderate a conversation with Ms. Harris and Ms. Cheney on Monday in the Milwaukee suburb of Brookfield. He has undertaken a political transformation that is perhaps greater than either Ms. Cheney’s or Mr. Kinzinger’s. During his heyday on Milwaukee radio, he regularly suggested shadowy outside forces were engaging in voter fraud to rig local elections and on occasion referred to Mrs. Obama using the racist sobriquet “Mooch.” In 2009, he emceed an event with Sarah Palin for the anti-abortion group Wisconsin Right to Life.
Until 2016, when he emerged as a leading conservative critic of Donald J. Trump’s first presidential bid, Mr. Sykes was a reliable mouthpiece for right-wing causes in Wisconsin. He was instrumental in the political rise of Senator Ron Johnson and Gov. Scott Walker, Republicans he later broke with after turning on Mr. Trump.
More recently, Mr. Sykes wrote a book denouncing Trump-allied conservatives and became an explainer of the political right on MSNBC and the center-right outlet The Bulwark, which he founded in 2018 and left in February. In 2021, Mr. Sykes announced he was no longer a Republican. This month, he said he would vote for Ms. Harris.
“There are a lot of things that I’m embarrassed about and now regret and for which I have apologized,” Mr. Sykes said on Saturday. “I wrote a book, ‘How the Right Lost its Mind,’ and have spent more than a few years trying to atone for a lot of that.”
Mr. Sykes is set to appear with Ms. Harris at a moment when her campaign is making an explicit appeal to the same suburban voters who once made up the bulk of his listeners. The event, co-moderated by Sarah Longwell, a Republican supporter of Ms. Harris, is part of a series intended to do just that. But Ms. Harris is also trying to reach Black voters who for years were the target of Mr. Sykes’s on-air ire.
His nickname for Mrs. Obama was perhaps Mr. Sykes’s most striking remark. He said it on the air, on social media and in online commentary. In a 2017 interview with Slate, Mr. Sykes said the pejorative amounted to “a brain-fart type thing.”
“That is something I am not offering any rationalization for,” he said then. “Yeah, sorry about that.”
On Saturday, Mr. Sykes said he “has the deepest respect for the former first lady.”
The Harris campaign declined to comment on Mr. Sykes’s past remarks about Mrs. Obama, who is set to campaign with Ms. Harris next Saturday.
In his books and commentary online and on television, Mr. Sykes has blamed other Republicans for changing their values to support Mr. Trump.
Local Democrats now say they have mostly put aside their reservations about Mr. Sykes and are happy to have him on their side.
“He was the shrieking voice that there was voter fraud everywhere for 10 years,” said Scot Ross, who led a progressive Wisconsin group that for years tangled with Mr. Sykes. “Now the mainstream Democratic apparatus has embraced him because he’s right on Trump.”
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