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Donald Trump’s campaign is preparing a major effort to attack Vice President Kamala Harris if President Joe Biden steps aside as the Democratic nominee, including a wave of ads focusing on her record in her current office and in California, according to two people briefed on the matter.

The Trump team has prepared opposition research books on Harris, and has similar dossiers on other Democrats who could become the nominee if Biden drops out of the race.

But the bulk of the preparations so far have been focused on Harris, including a recently concluded poll testing her vulnerabilities in a general election contest, according to the two people. The Trump team’s attention on Harris is based on its assumption that if Democrats were to bypass the first Black woman to serve as vice president, it would drive even deeper divisions in the party and risk alienating their base of Black voters.

Trump allies have also begun examining the records of Democratic governors who are considered potential running mates for Harris. Advisers to the former president are paying especially close attention to Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro — the state the Trump campaign is most focused on winning to block the Democrats’ path to the White House.

A Trump campaign spokesperson did not respond to an email seeking comment.

Brian Fallon, a campaign spokesperson for Harris, said in a statement: “After tanking the bipartisan border deal, Donald Trump has resorted to lying about the vice president’s record. As a former district attorney and attorney general, she has stood up to fraudsters and felons like Trump her entire career. Trump’s lies won’t stop her from continuing to prosecute the case against him on the biggest issues in this race.”

Since Biden’s disastrous debate performance on June 27, Trump and his political operation have softened their criticisms of the president, hoping he stays politically viable until the party formally nominates him and it’s too late to replace him without major legal hurdles. Trump’s senior team would prefer that Biden remains in the race, believing his low approval numbers and voters’ widespread doubts about his age and cognitive fitness represent the former president’s best chance at reclaiming the White House.

After the debate, the Trump team decided to hold back advertising that could further damage Biden, according to one person briefed on the Trump campaign’s internal discussions, who wasn’t authorized to speak publicly. A change at the top of the ticket could throw a remarkably stable race into chaos — particularly if Harris, who would be the first Black woman elected president, becomes the nominee.

Shortly before the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee this past week, as a growing number of Democrats called for Biden to leave the race, the Trump team prepared anti-Harris signs and videos to show the delegates in the arena and the television audience at home, according to people briefed on the plans. But they scrapped those plans after a young man tried to assassinate Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13, two days before the start of the convention. With the nation still in shock, the pressure on Biden to leave the race briefly abated, and the Trump team assumed the Harris contingency plans were no longer necessary.

The Trump campaign was always going to make Harris — who has repeatedly said that Biden is the nominee and that they’re running together — part of the story, particularly with Biden’s visible physical struggles, said Liam Donovan, a former National Republican Senatorial Committee aide.

“But with the prospect of a switch at the top of the ticket, there’s a sudden sense of urgency around defining Kamala Harris and cementing a lackluster image that has long made Democrats queasy,” Donovan said. But he also noted a potential pitfall for Trump: “Being the front-runner against another history-making candidate would introduce new risks for a campaign hoping to reap historic gains among Black voters.”

Some Trump aides say privately that Harris might be better at delivering certain messages than Biden has been, particularly on abortion rights, an issue that galvanized Democrats in the 2022 midterm elections. And as a former prosecutor, she may be positioned make a sharp argument about Trump’s criminal indictments, including his conviction in New York City on charges that he falsified business records to conceal a hush-money payment to a porn actor in 2016.

But they also believe Harris will have to own every unpopular Biden-era policy, which will cancel out the gains she might make. In particular, the Trump team plans to attack her over the border crisis, one that the president tasked her with finding the “root causes” of. Aides to Harris have said that Trump has distorted her role, and have noted that regardless, border crossings have fallen since a Biden administration curtailing of asylum.

They are also looking to define her based on her tenure as a senator in California and, before that, her time as the state’s attorney general and as the district attorney of San Francisco, where her record during her 2020 presidential campaign was criticized alternately as too conservative or too lenient toward first-time drug offenders.

According to people briefed on the strategy, if Biden drops out of the 2024 race but doesn’t resign as president, Republicans will argue that the reasons he quit the race are the same reasons he’s unfit to remain as commander in chief. They will try to tie Harris to Biden by claiming there was a broad effort to prevent the public from seeing the president’s deterioration and suggest she was part of that effort.

Republicans running in competitive congressional races are adopting this message. After Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, on Friday called on Biden to leave the race, his Republican rival Bernie Moreno posted on the social platform X: “If Joe Biden is unfit to run, he is unfit to serve. I am formally calling on Joe Biden to resign the presidency because his continued presence in the situation room is a national security threat. I hope Senator Brown will join me.”

Republicans have long criticized Harris. She has been on the receiving end of similar Republican attacks, particularly about the border and Biden’s acuity, for years. And despite not rolling out videos or signs, several Republicans made her part of their focus during their convention this past week, mentioning her both in conjunction with Biden and also on her own.

While Democrats are stumbling toward resolution, the Trump campaign has marveled at its position heading into the general election. Biden’s team has spent tens of millions of dollars in advertising this year, but the president has not gained ground in the race against Trump. The Trump campaign and its allied outside groups, however, have spent far less and are said to have significant cash reserves for the months ahead.

In the week since the assassination attempt against Trump, a collection of outside groups run by a former Trump aide, Taylor Budowich, has raised $75 million, according to a person briefed on the amount. Both the Trump campaign and allied groups have been conserving resources, particularly since Trump had a fundraising windfall after he was criminally convicted in New York City at the end of May.

The super political action committee that Budowich runs, MAGA Inc., has conducted its own opposition research on prospective nominees who might replace Biden. But the group, like the campaign, assumes Harris is the likeliest prospect, and officials there have conducted extensive message-testing about her.

A recent New York Times/Siena College poll found Harris in a slightly stronger position against Trump than the president. The poll, however, was completed before the assassination attempt on Trump.

Still, Jim Hobart, a pollster whose firm, Public Opinion Strategies, is helping to conduct NBC’s bipartisan poll, said Harris is starting from a fairly defined place nationally.

In the most recent survey, he said, “50% of voters already have a negative opinion of Harris. Just 32% have a positive opinion,” he said. “Could those positive numbers improve if she is the nominee? Sure. But remember, she has never shown herself to be a particularly skilled candidate.”

He pointed to her narrow win in the 2010 attorney general’s race, and the bust that was her presidential campaign in 2020.

The Republican National Committee is closely tracking possible changes on the Democratic ticket and is leaving open the possibility of lawsuits related to the potential transfer and use of Biden campaign funds, according to one official with knowledge of the matter.

For instance, if a new committee is created for Harris, and donors who have donated the $6,600 maximum to the Biden-Harris campaign try to donate to her, Republicans are likely to sue, arguing it’s an over-the-limit donation, the official said. They’re also watching whether Harris as the presumptive nominee would try to access money before she is formally nominated by her party.

And should the Biden team try something untested, such as transferring its money to a super PAC that supports a candidate, a lawsuit is also likely to follow, the official said.

Even if such lawsuits don’t stop the actions, they could gum up the gears of the new Democratic ticket moving forward and highlight the chaos that Democrats have been facing.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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