Team Harris-Walz launches small business for Harris-Walz, announces battleground events mobilizing small business owners – WisPolitics

Yesterday, Team Harris-Walz launched Small Business for Harris-Walz, a national organizing program to engage and mobilize America’s small business owners. Small business owners, advocates, entrepreneurs, and founders, along with leaders of small business organizations from all corners of the country, are bolstering the campaign’s organizing efforts and harnessing the support of small business owners for Vice President Kamala Harris and Governor Tim Walz. In Black, Latino, and Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) communities especially, small businesses serve as trusted community centers, and will play a critical role in organizing voters on the ground across the country.

The Small Business for Harris-Walz launch comes on the heels of a series of launch events for the coalition this past weekend, including a large community event in Las Vegas. This week, the campaign will also hold events in partnership with small business owners — including organizing events, volunteer trainings, and house parties — in battleground states, including Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania.

Small business owners have already mobilized in support of Vice President Harris and Governor Walz. They have led canvass launches across the battlegrounds, hosted phone banks, knocked on doors, written op-eds, and more over the last few months of the campaign. Over the summer, the campaign launched a small business canvas program, visiting over 6,000 businesses spanning the country, including in Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

“Small businesses are the backbone of our communities, and of our economy. Small business owners deserve a President who will always fight for their best interests – not one who only looks out for billionaires and large corporations,” said Campaign National Director for Small Business Engagement Richard Garcia. “Vice President Harris has proven that she will be a champion for small business and will continue to fight so that we can unlock the potential of small business owners, unlike Donald Trump who is only fighting for himself. Small Business for Harris-Walz will help us drive this stark contrast and mobilize thousands of entrepreneurs all across the country.”

The formation of the coalition comes as Vice President Harris has pledged to make the vitality of the small business community central to a Harris administration. Her proposals would:

• Provide a dramatic tenfold expansion of tax relief for starting a small business, expanding the startup expense deduction for small businesses from $5,000 to $50,000.
• Cut unnecessary red tape, making it easier for small businesses to file taxes, reducing barriers to getting occupational licenses across states, and reducing burdensome small business regulations.
• Set a goal of 25 million new business applications in her first term—exceeding the record 19 million new business applications already seen under the Biden/Harris Administration.
• Help existing small businesses grow by providing low-and no-interest loans to small businesses, boost access to venture capital, and support innovation hubs and business incubators.
• Make our tax code fairer, while ensuring the wealthy and big corporations pay their fair share, she will tax capital gains at a rate that rewards investment in America’s innovators, founders, and small businesses.

In stark contrast, Trump’s Project 2025 agenda would cut off federal programs that give support to small businesses all while giving billionaires and the biggest corporations massive tax cuts.

Vice President Harris recognizes that ensuring the vitality and growth of America’s small business community and entrepreneurial ventures is central to Harris’s economic policy initiatives and was a cornerstone of her speech to the Economic Club of Pittsburgh on September 25 outlining her New Way Forward economic agenda.

Team Harris-Walz recognizes the vital role that small businesses play in shaping our nation’s future. The Small Business for Harris-Walz organizing program will work to inform and mobilize the community to elect Kamala Harris, ensuring that entrepreneurs have the opportunity to not only get by, but get ahead.