When Vice President Kamala Harris took the stage in Malvern, Pa., Monday for her event with former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney, sitting on the stage just feet away was Jim Greenwood.

Greenwood, who also appeared at Harris’ event in Washington Crossing, Pa., last week with more than 100 of his fellow Republican former officials, is not just any Republican supporting Harris in her presidential bid. The former congressman is one of her top surrogates in the state and a co-chair of “Pennsylvania Republicans for Harris” as the campaign tries to make inroads with moderate GOP voters who may have soured on former President Donald Trump.

“This is not a campaign that's about issues, this is about character, and Trump has none,” Greenwood told Spectrum News in early August when Harris announced Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate. “If you differ with Harris on some of the issues – and I do – that's why we have a two-party system. And in the Congress, her issues, some of them, will be tempered by the Republicans, and that'll be okay. It's the way the country is supposed to work.”

Greenwood, who invited Spectrum News into his home a few weeks later, has memorabilia and photographs with politicians from both parties. The six-term congressman, who ran for a seat in the  Pennsylvania House at 28 and unseated a Democratic incumbent, sees politics not as a blood sport, but as public service. He was recruited by Newt Gingrich to run for Congress in 1992 and signed the Contract with America, the Republican leader’s signature policy agenda.

He told us he “supported every presidential candidate from Richard Nixon all the way to Mitt Romney,” but has never cast a ballot for Donald Trump.

“I was a loyal Republican the whole time, although a moderate Republican in many ways. So it's not about who's a Republican, it's about who's qualified for office, and if it had been almost anyone else besides Donald Trump running in these last three presidential elections, if it was a Republican who was fit for office, that's probably where I would be.”

The vice president’s tour with Cheney is the latest effort by the campaign to reach voters in the battleground states. Campaign sources confirm a more than seven-figure ad buy in the swing states, including an ad in Pennsylvania featuring local farmers who supported Trump in previous elections but are throwing their support behind Harris in November. 

“I voted for him twice. I won't vote for him again. January 6th was a wake up call for me,” Republican farmer Bob Lange says in the ad. 

“Donald Trump divides people. We've already seen what he has to bring,” added his wife Kristina, sitting beside him.

But will these efforts be enough to change the trajectory of the election?

“It's going to be incredibly close, and that means if you change even half a percent of people's minds, if you give them a reason to show up when they otherwise wouldn't, or in this case, to give them a reason to jump ship and go for a Democratic candidate when before they were a lifelong Republican, then that could be the difference, especially in these all important swing states,” explained Casey Burgat, director of the Legislative Affairs program at the George Washington University’s Graduate School of Political Management. “It's kind of ‘throw everything against the wall’ time right now. And that's why we see this outreach to Republican former officials to make the plea.”

Harris’ campaign has also been touting endorsements from over 100 Republican former national security officials, in addition to endorsements from former Vice President Dick Cheney, former Republican congress members Charlie Dent, Denver Riggleman, Barbara Comstock, Jeff Flake, and others.   

For Greenwood, he’s continuing personal outreach to Republican voters via text and with local events throughout Pennsylvania, and he’s hoping that voters will see the differences between the candidates.

“What I say to my Republican friends is, ‘look, you got a binary choice here. You're going to have this guy who was just mentally not well and dangerous, and you may think his positions are like yours,’” he explained of his pitch. “Or you can go to Kamala Harris, who is the opposite of Trump: she's a public servant who gets up every morning and tries to figure out what she can do for the country. She's decent, she's honest, she has a big heart. She's a smart and tough woman, okay?”

“If you're worried that she's going to take the country too far to the left, remember, when this election is over, there will be plenty of Republicans in the Congress. The Senate may even go Republican, the house is probably 50/50, and so she's not going to try to pass things that have no chance of getting past the Republicans in the Congress.”