A trio of Republicans who were leading strategists in their party for a generation and held high-level positions in Florida government are the newest backers of Vice President Kamala Harris.
The Democratic presidential candidate’s campaign plans to formally announce their endorsements and their addition as three new Florida co-chairs of Republicans for Harris on Wednesday in Tallahassee.
Bob Milligan, Jim Smith and Mac Stipanovich were well known — at least to people in the political world — in the 1990s and early 2000s, and Milligan and Smith were repeatedly elected to office statewide.
“Now, during this critical moment in history, these leaders are encouraging other like-minded Republicans to put country over party,” the Harris campaign spokesperson said.
“I recognize the threat that Donald Trump poses to the foundation stones of our democracy, which are the rule of law and public confidence in free and fair elections,” Smith said in a statement via the Harris campaign. “Trump believes he is above the law, and he tells his followers that any elections he and his allies do not win are rigged. It’s wrong, and it’s dangerous. Kamala Harris believes that no one is above the law, and she believes in American democracy.”
Smith is a former Florida attorney general and former secretary of state. Decades ago he was elected to statewide office as a Democrat, and was later elected to statewide office as a Republican.
Stipanovich, a longtime high-level Florida Republican strategist, said Trump “is a blustering, name-calling bully who only cares about himself. If we had been in the fifth-grade together, I would have fought him every week and my father would have bought me ice cream for doing it.”
Stipanovich, who was a chief of staff to former Gov. Bob Martinez, ran Jeb Bush’s unsuccessful 1994 campaign for governor, and worked on other statewide and presidential campaigns, has since left the Republican Party. He’s an outspoken critic of Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis.
“I have already voted for Kamala Harris,” Stipanovich said in a statement. “I urge others who care about the country more than party to do the same.”
Milligan, who was the last elected state comptroller in Florida, is the third new state co-chair. (The position was merged with the state treasurer and became state chief financial officer in the early 2000s.) Milligan is a former Marine Corps lieutenant general.
“I know something about leadership and character and how critical they are for those with power and responsibility. Donald Trump has proven that he lacks the character to lead,” Milligan said.
The Harris campaign has sought to appeal to Republicans who don’t like Trump’s policies, many of which are antithetical to generations of conservative Republican philosophy, and to people who are alarmed by authoritarian pronouncements from the former president.
The campaign has sought to appeal to Republicans who voted for former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina in the presidential primaries.
In August, Republicans for Harris launched with three Florida co-chairs: former state Sen. Paula Dockery of Lakeland, former Treasury Department official Greg Wilson, and Rich Logis, a South Florida resident who once was active in Trump’s Make America Great Again movement.
Logis has since formed Leaving MAGA, a movement aimed at providing a place to smooth the path for people like him who no longer support the former president.
Dockery left the Republican Party on the day Trump was inaugurated in 2017, and Logis also left and became a no party affiliation/independent voter.
Of the 154,000 it has signed up in Florida, the Harris campaign has said 6% are Republicans.
Anthony Man can be reached at aman@sunsentinel.com and can be found @browardpolitics on Bluesky, Threads, Facebook and Mastodon.
