The Republican vice-presidential nominee, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), privately told donors that running against Vice President Harris instead of President Biden made the race more challenging — an admission at odds with the Donald Trump campaign’s public projections of confidence.

“All of us were hit with a little bit of a political sucker punch,” Vance said about Biden’s withdrawal on July 21, according to a recording of his remarks at a Saturday fundraiser in Golden Valley, Minn. “The bad news is that Kamala Harris does not have the same baggage as Joe Biden, because whatever we might have to say, Kamala is a lot younger. And Kamala Harris is obviously not struggling in the same ways that Joe Biden did.”

Publicly, the Trump campaign has insisted that Harris replacing Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket has not changed the race, arguing that she shares responsibility for public dissatisfaction with Biden’s leadership. Vance told reporters on July 22, a day after Biden dropped out of the race, that there was no difference in running against Harris vs. Biden.

“I don’t think the political calculus changes at all,” Vance said. “We were running against Joe Biden’s open border, Kamala Harris’s open border. Kamala Harris supported the green new scam. Kamala Harris, frankly, covered Joe Biden even though it was obvious he was mentally incompetent for a very long time.”

Trump adviser Jason Miller said in a July 22 Fox News interview: “Democrats are a bit of jumping out of the frying pan into the fire. And they may have gotten rid of one problem with Joe Biden, but they’ve inherited a whole new problem with Kamala Harris.”

Trump himself has expressed nostalgia for running against Biden (“He will always be my first choice”) and at the same time dismissed Harris as “worse than Joe.”

Vance, though, gave a different assessment for donors on Saturday ahead of joining Trump at a rally in St. Cloud, Minn. He said Harris was less well-known than Trump or Biden, so Republicans would have to work to shape people’s opinions of her.

“We have a very unique opportunity, but also a very unique challenge, because, let’s be honest, 10 days ago, the two candidates who were running for president, everybody had an opinion about ’em. Love ’em or hate ’em, everybody has an opinion about Donald Trump and Joe Biden after the past eight years,” Vance said. “But Kamala Harris, people don’t really know.”

Vance said the campaign would try to define Harris based on past positions, which he said included opposing fracking, praising the “defund the police” movement and supporting decriminalization of unauthorized border crossings. The Harris campaign says she won’t ban fracking. She denounced “defund the police” after becoming Biden’s running mate, and the current administration opposes decriminalizing border crossings.

At the fundraiser Vance recounted asking Trump senior adviser Susie Wiles how the race had changed, and he said she answered that she was more confident Trump would win because people like Trump’s polices better than Biden’s.

Two national polls taken since Biden dropped out showed Trump and Harris within the margin of error, erasing Trump’s earlier leads over Biden in the same surveys.

Vance spokesman Will Martin said Monday in a statement: “Poll after poll shows President Trump leading Kamala Harris as voters become aware of her weak, failed and dangerously liberal agenda. Her far-left ideas are even more radioactive than Joe Biden, particularly in the key swing states that will decide this election like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.”

Meryl Kornfield contributed to this report.