FLASHBACK: While defending then-Sen. Kamala Harris against criticism from then-President Donald Trump, Sen. Sherrod Brown told CNN that Trump voters are “supporting a racist for president.”

“Well I think it works,” Brown told CNN’s Anderson Cooper when asked about Trump calling Harris “horrible” and “nasty.”

“It’s the reason that the 35 percent of Americans that support President Trump love President Trump, because he plays to the anger and fear and resentment and often to racism of not all but some of his supporters,” Brown continued. “But keep in mind, his supporters are, whether they’re – while I’ve not called all of them racist, I understand that they are supporting a racist for President, but it works for them. It just drives more and more of the public away from him. And that’s why so much of the public has just had it with Trump, including some that voted for him.” 

Brown’s 2020 comment followed a comment in 2019 on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” where he also called Trump racist.

‘PREGNANT PERSONS’: OHIO SEN SHERROD BROWN SCRUBBED ‘WOMEN’ FROM BILL ON PREGNANCY

“We have a president who’s a racist,” Brown said. “He built his political career knowing what he was doing, questioning the legitimacy and the birthplace of the president of the United States. I know early there have been all kinds of news reports about what he did early in his career with housing.”

In a statement to Fox News Digital, National Republican Senatorial Committee Spokesperson Philip Letsou said, “It’s no secret that Sherrod Brown hates Donald Trump and his supporters, it’s why he regularly insults Trump voters and voted to impeach Trump twice.”

“But now that he needs their votes, Brown is trying to cover up his anti-Trump radicalism with misleading ads. Everyone can see through Shameless Sherrod’s desperate ploy.”

‘MISSING’ SIGNS AT DNC CALL OUT DEMOCRAT IN KEY SENATE RACE WHO SKIPPED CONVENTION WITH DISPUTED EXCUSE

Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, is seen during senate votes in the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday, Jan. 23, 2024. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

Brown, who is involved in one of the most closely watched Senate races in the country against GOP challenger Bernie Moreno in a state that Trump won by 8 points in 2020, also introduced a resolution tying the immigration system in the United States to “structural racism.”

“Whereas examples of structural racism include…that members of the Black, Native American, Alaska Native, Asian American, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander, and Hispanic or Latino communities are disproportionately impacted by the criminal justice and immigration enforcement systems and face a higher risk of contracting COVID–19 within prison populations and detention centers due to the over-incarceration of members of those communities,” Brown wrote in the resolution earlier this year.

Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump, right, greets Ohio Republican candidate for U.S. Senate Bernie Moreno during a rally at the Dayton International Airport on March 16, 2024 in Vandalia, Ohio. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Fox News Digital asked the Brown campaign whether the Ohio senator stands by his 2020 comment on Trump’s alleged racism.

“Sherrod fights for all Ohioans – whether you’re a steelworker in Cleveland or a teacher in Cincinnati or a veteran in Chillicothe,” a Brown campaign spokesperson told Fox News Digital. 

“While Sherrod always does the right thing for Ohioans, Bernie Moreno only looks out for himself and stole his workers’ overtime pay, shredded key evidence a judge ordered him to keep, and sold the Chinese-made Buick Envision, which hurt Ohio autoworkers.”

The race between Moreno and Brown is expected to be a close one as Republicans view it as one of their strongest opportunities to take back control of the Senate in November.

The Cook Political report ranks the race as a “toss up.”

Everyone wants to be a centrist now.

It’s all the rage.

Now if an ordinary person, say a friend of yours, changed positions on major issues, they would probably offer you an explanation. But politicians play by a different set of rules. 

After a primary season in which both Donald Trump and now Kamala Harris have been laser-focused on riling up their base, both are edging–in some cases sprinting–toward the center.

VP HARRIS ACCUSED OF ‘ACTIVELY ENCOURAGING’ ILLEGAL MIGRATION — AND COORDINATING WITH MEXICO

Political theft is not a crime, or the jails would be packed to capacity. 

Harris, in Las Vegas, blatantly ripped off Trump’s proposal to bar taxes on tips to service workers.

The focus has been on the vice president, not just because she’s new to the race but because she has studiously avoided the press until her sitdown with CNN’s Dana Bash. She does regularly come back on the plane for off-the-record sessions, with each reporter present getting a question. But obviously that’s of limited value to the rest of us.

The larger problem for Harris is that she has a host of far-left positions she took in her 2020 presidential run that she had abandoned without explanation.

These include the abolition of private health insurance (under Bernie Sanders’ Medicare for All); her past opposition to fracking, and embrace of decriminalizing illegal border crossings.

Her repeated refrain; “My values have not changed.”

On fracking, Harris told CNN, “I made clear on the debate stage in 2020 that I would not ban fracking as vice president.” That is not true. She said Joe Biden would not ban fracking. 

The VP did offer something of an explanation, that the administration had created over 300,000 clean energy jobs and “that tells me…we can do it without banning fracking.”

FORMER PRESIDENT TRUMP RIPS ‘DISHONEST MEDIA’ OVER MISREPRESENTATION OF JOKES

Bash cited another blast from the past: “There was a debate. You raised your hand when asked whether or not the border should be decriminalized. Do you still believe that?”

Harris: “I believe there should be consequences. We have laws that have to be followed and enforced, that address and deal with people who cross our border illegally.” No mention of why she shifted her stance.

What Kamala is doing is what most general-election candidates do: moving toward the center. Whatever she thought matched the mood of the country in 2019, including her earlier career as a prosecutor, is clearly untenable today.

But on the Republican side, Trump is doing the same thing. It’s just getting less attention because he makes plenty of other news, from the Arlington Cemetery flap to personal attacks on Harris.

(Kate Medley for The Washington Post via Getty Images)

This has been most visible on abortion, which has become a difficult subject for Republicans. On one level, Trump owns the issue, because it was his three Supreme Court justices who enabled the overturning of Roe after a half-century of precedent.

But now he’s said that Florida’s 6-week ban on the procedure is too short, that he believes there need to be more weeks. There was some backtracking on whether he’d support a competing initiative in the state, but not on the comments about 6 weeks, when many women don’t know they’re pregnant.

When I interviewed the former president at Mar-a-Lago, he indicated he would favor a 15- or 16-week abortion ban – but decided at the state level, under the SCOTUS ruling. 

WHY KAMALA HARRIS AND DANA BASH GET A MIXED GRADE IN VP’S FIRST MEDIA SIT DOWN

“He also declared that “my administration will be great for women and their reproductive rights.” This has triggered a backlash among some pro-life groups, who now deem Trump essentially pro-choice.

Trump is basically sliding to the center, to make his position more palatable to a wider range of voters, especially women, even though he has boasted about the repeal of Roe. 

(In that Mar-a-Lago interview, I asked Trump why he changed his mind on TikTok after trying to ban the Chinese-owned app as president. He said that would help Facebook, which he’s more concerned about, and of course TikTok has an enthusiastic base of younger users.)

Over the weekend, Trump said he would back another Florida measure, to legalize recreational use of marijuana. He said the state should not “ruin lives & waste Taxpayer Dollars” by prosecuting people who possess small amounts for personal use. Again, a move toward a more moderate position that has drawn flak from some conservatives. 

Kamala accused him of, well, a flip-flop. She said that as president his Justice Department cracked down on pot smokers.

Part of what’s going on is that both candidates ignore the timing of past stances for political benefit. A Trump ad has Harris saying “Everyday prices are too high. Food, rent, gas, back-to-school clothes,” edited into “Bidenomics is working.” 

Harris was talking about high prices caused by the pandemic in a speech last month, and “Bidenomics” was from a speech last year when she was reacting to a monthly jobs report. 

Kamala says Trump is pushing Project 2025, although he disavowed the Heritage project early on and repeatedly (though it’s staffed by many of his former White House aides).

Moving to the center is an art form, and that’s what both candidates are attempting right now.

In its first advertisement for the general election season, the campaign for Rep. Mike Garcia, a politically vulnerable Santa Clarita Republican, offers a misleading description of the congressman’s role in passing the Violence Against Women Act, which provides aid for victims of domestic violence and sexual assault.

The 30-second advertisement, titled “Voices,” was released Tuesday. It features an unnamed female constituent who says: “Mike co-sponsored the Violence Against Women Act to protect us against domestic violence. That’s why we need Mike Garcia in Congress.”

Garcia made the same co-sponsorship claim at a Santa Clarita town hall event last month, calling his support “a big deal” because “not very many Republicans” had sponsored reauthorization of the landmark 1994 law.

But in 2021, Garcia voted against a version of the reauthorization measure that was passed by the Democratic House majority, joining conservatives who protested provisions that expanded protections for LGBTQ+ people and tightened gun access for people convicted of abusing or stalking a dating partner. Instead, Garcia co-sponsored a Republican-led stop-gap measure to renew the act for one year, minus the new provisions, that failed to move forward.

He was not a co-sponsor of the amended reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act that Democratic President Biden ultimately signed into law the following year as part of a wide-ranging federal spending measure. It is that version of the act that remains in force today.

The Garcia campaign did not respond to requests for comment.

Garcia’s Democratic opponent, George Whitesides, also released his first ad on Tuesday. The 30-second TV spot, titled “Experience,” highlights Whitesides’ time as a NASA chief of staff and a chief executive of Mojave-based Virgin Galactic.

“I’ll use my business experience to solve problems instead of playing politics,” Whitesides says in the ad.

The race between Garcia and Whitesides to represent Congressional District 27 in northern Los Angeles County, including the Antelope Valley, is one of the most competitive — and consequential — in the country.

Erin Covey, an analyst for the Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan election handicapper, said the race will be crucial in determining whether Republicans maintain their narrow majority in the U.S. House. Although Garcia has been elected three times, he represents a district where Democrats hold a significant voter registration advantage, and which President Biden won by double digits in 2020.

“I think this is going to be a race to watch,” Covey said during a roundtable discussion at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago last month. “It’s suburban. It’s diverse. It’s a race where [Vice President Kamala] Harris should really be a boost.”

The new ads by Garcia and Whitesides mark the start of a major advertising blitz that will inundate Southern California airwaves through election day.

The Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC that supports Republicans running for the House, has reserved $18.2 million for advertising in the Los Angeles area this fall, with a focus on the 27th District.

The House Majority PAC, which backs Democrats, has booked more than $22.4 million in television and digital ads in both English and Spanish in the Los Angeles media market, one of the country’s most expensive.

The House Majority PAC said last year that it would spend $35 million in California, roughly triple what it spent on the 2022 midterm campaigns in the Golden State, when Democrats underperformed in some districts that had been expected to be strongholds.

The new advertisement from Garcia’s campaign leans into his military credentials. The congressman, a former Navy fighter pilot, flew in more than 30 combat missions during Operation Iraqi Freedom before spending 11 years as an executive with defense contractor Raytheon.

“While I’m no longer in the cockpit, my fight for you and the country never stops,” he says in the ad, wearing a brown leather flight jacket.

Constituents chime in to say that his “new mission” includes lowering prescription drug costs and “fighting the career politicians” to lower costs for families. The ad does not specify which costs.

The new ad for Whitesides says he created more than 700 jobs in the Antelope Valley and Santa Clarita while leading Virgin Galactic.

Those jobs included positions for engineers, technicians, accountants, human relations professionals and others, with a focus on early-career development for recent high school and community college graduates, Whitesides said in an interview this week.

Whitesides, a first-time candidate, said his first ad focuses on job creation because so many of the district’s residents endure long commutes to work in Los Angeles while living in the Antelope Valley, where housing is more affordable.

“People are hungry for local job opportunities so they don’t have to spend four hours on the road,” Whitesides said.

In the ad, Whitesides also says people are struggling with crime and that he will “get more funding for police.”

Whitesides has come out in favor of Proposition 36, a statewide ballot measure that calls for stiffer penalties for some drug and theft crimes.

The measure, called the Homelessness, Drug Addiction, and Theft Reduction Act, asks voters to partially unwind Proposition 47, a controversial ballot initiative passed in 2014 that reclassified some nonviolent felonies as misdemeanors.

Proposition 36 has been endorsed by the California Republican Party.

Democrats are split on the measure. It has been endorsed by some big-city mayors, including San Francisco Mayor London Breed and San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan. But Gov. Gavin Newsom and some top Democratic leaders in the state Legislature have spoken out against it, alleging it would return California to a draconian tough-on-crime era that swelled the state’s prison population to unconstitutional levels.

Whitesides said he’s “one of the few Democrats who have come out in favor of the reform measure” because residents want to get smash-and-grab robberies under control and are “rightly concerned about public safety.”

In his town hall meeting last month, Garcia said he, too, supported more funding for law enforcement. He said Proposition 47 needed to be nixed and that state Democrats had been pushing too many “pro-criminal” policies.

Times staff writer Noah Bierman contributed to this report.