Ousted Montco Republican Party official Matthew McCaffery appearing in Harris campaign ads

Matthew McCaffery, the ousted GOP official in Montgomery County who was slammed after speaking out against former President Donald Trump, now appears in modern ads for Vice President Kamala Harris airing starting Thursday evening in various states, including Pennsylvania.

McCaffery, 43, a veteran who lives in West Conshohocken, has appeared on “Republicans Against Trump” billboards in Pennsylvania, wrote an anti-Trump op-ed in the Inquirer and talked about supporting Harris on CNN before his home was ransacked in August, it was a prank call in which someone would make a false alarm to attract police to a specific address.

McCaffery, the grocery store’s head of risk management, was subsequently removed from his position as the Montgomery County Republican Committee member and chairman 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 affiliated with the Philadelphia-based group “Haley Voters for Harris.”

In one of two modern ads featuring the Montco Republican, McCaffery claims he voted for Trump and attended his inauguration in 2016. The ads mark his first direct collaboration with the Harris campaign.

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

According to them, the modern 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 (which has its own electoral vote). to the Harris campaign.

McCaffery said in an interview that he voted for Trump in the 2016 primary without thinking the former reality star and businessman would defeat Democratic presidential candidate Hilary Clinton. However, he voted for an independent candidate in the general election, deciding not to support Trump or Clinton.

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

McCaffery voted for President Joe Biden in 2020, marking the second time he has endorsed the 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 killing Osama bin Laden, he said.

McCaffery said that while he won’t agree with Harris on everything, he believes she will care about 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 Trump’s presidency. increase.

“It’s a little weird that I’m even saying that the Democratic Party is becoming more and more what I grew up knowing as a Republican,” he said.

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

But McCaffery is not a Republican-turned-Democrat. He hopes that Trump will fail this year, allowing the Republican Party to rebuild.

“I hope we can readjust,” he said. “Republicans like me will need to pick up the pieces of what Trump and his cronies have done to the Republican Party over the last eight years.”