Ousted Montco GOP official Matthew McCaffery appearing in Harris campaign ads

Matthew McCaffery, the ousted Montgomery County Republican official who was crushed after speaking out against former President Donald Trump, is now featured in new ads for Vice President Kamala Harris airing in swing states starting Thursday evening.

McCaffery, 43, a veteran who lives in Conshohocken, has been featured on Pennsylvania’s “Republicans Against Trump” billboards, wrote an Inquirer op-ed against Trump and spoke on CNN about supporting Harris before his home was foreclosed on in August beaten up, a prank in which someone calls a fake emergency to lure the police to a specific address. McCaffery, the head of risk management at a supermarket, was subsequently removed from his position on the Montgomery County Republican Committee member and chairman of the Upper Merion Republican Committee just days after the incident for encouraging people to vote against the party. He later expressed support for Harris in a video shown at the DNC, and is involved with a Philly-based “Haley Voters for Harris” group.

In one of two new ads featuring Republican Montco, McCaffery says he voted for Trump and went to his 2016 inauguration. The ads are his first direct collaboration with the Harris campaign.

“We tried for four years, but it just didn’t work, and it’s time to move on,” McCaffery, who is originally from Roxborough, said in an ad. “It will be more of the same, and the middle class will suffer. Take it from me: I’m a lifelong Republican, I’m still a Republican. Kamala is trying to help the American people, especially the American middle class.”

According to the Harris campaign, the new ads will appear on digital services such as ConnectedTV, YouTube and YouTube TV in Pennsylvania, Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Minnesota, New Hampshire and Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District.

McCaffery said in an interview that he voted for Trump in the 2016 primaries, not thinking the former reality TV star and businessman would defeat Democratic presidential candidate Hilary Clinton. But he voted for an independent candidate in the general election and decided not to endorse Trump or Clinton.

“I remember saying to myself, and I regret it…I thought, you know what? The Republican Party thinks we need a Donald Trump, please,” he said of his primary vote for Trump.

McCaffery voted for President Joe Biden in 2020, the second time he has endorsed a Democratic presidential candidate. The first time was when he voted for former President Barack Obama in 2012, largely because of his foreign policy efforts, including the killing of Osama bin Laden, he said.

McCaffery said that while he won’t agree with Harris on everything, he believes she will take care of the country as a whole and that she has embraced a message of patriotism and cooperation, values ​​he used to see in his own party before the arrival from Trump. politics to get up.

“It’s a little strange to me to even say that the Democratic party is becoming more and more of what I grew up knowing the Republican was,” he said.

» READ MORE: These Republicans are on a mission to convince Republican voters to support Kamala Harris.

But McCaffery is not a Republican turned Democrat. He hopes for a Trump loss this year, which will make way for the rebuilding of the Republican Party.

“Hopefully we can adapt,” he said. “There will be a need for Republicans like me to pick up the pieces of what Trump and his minions have done to the Republican Party over the past eight years.”