Kamala Harris has been in seclusion since her presidential election loss, relaxing with family and senior aides in Hawaii before returning to the nation’s capital.
But the vice president has privately told his advisers and allies to keep his options open, including a possible presidential run in 2028 or a run for governor in his home state of California in two years. are. As Harris reiterated on the phone, “I’m staying in the fight.”
Ms. Harris plans to explore these and other possibilities with her family over the winter break, according to five people close to Ms. Harris, who requested anonymity to discuss internal developments. Her deliberations follow an extraordinary four months in which Ms. Harris rose from being President Joe Biden’s running mate to the top of the campaign and reinvigorated the Democratic Party before ultimately collapsing on election night.
“She doesn’t have to decide whether she wants to run for anything again in the next six months,” said one former Harris campaign aide. “The obvious thing to do would be to establish some kind of organization that would give her opportunities to travel and speak and maintain political connections.”
Harris and her advisers are immediately working to determine how and when to speak out against Donald Trump and reassert her role within the Democratic Party. As she finishes her term as vice president, she will preside over the certification of the November election she lost to Trump, and then attend the inauguration of the former and future president on January 20.
A source close to Harris said, “There will be a desire to hear her voice, and I don’t think there will be a long hiatus.”
At the same time, Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, have a long checklist to clear before leaving the Naval Observatory for good.
They will need to decide whether to permanently reside in their home in Los Angeles or be based elsewhere. Regardless of where Harris and her family live, her Secret Service protection expires six months after she leaves office, so some people around her have expressed concerns about her safety.
Her rapid rise in Washington and California has raised internal questions about starting a federal committee to raise money. This will be the first time in 20 years that the former senator and career prosecutor will leave public office. That means starting a private firm and developing a large online presence without an organizing principle of day-to-day governance.
“Let them soak in their successes, their failures, their mistakes, or their accomplishments. This is personal,” said Harris, a close ally who ran for president and lost. , said Donna Brazile, campaign manager for the last vice president, Al Gore, who never ran again. Instead, he made climate change the cause of his life.
Mr. Brazile said Mr. Gore was given months before people wanted answers about his next move, and that Mr. Harris had received “a lot of political money” in the past few months despite her loss. He recalled that he had won the following. Don’t waste it on a spur-of-the-moment decision. ”
Other Democratic members have lost presidential elections and been forced to regroup, but in modern times no member has inherited the nomination roughly 100 days before the election. In fact, most of the losses to date have occurred after carefully planned and often difficult climbs to the top. Mr. Harris is relatively young at 60 years old.
“No one, no one, can really relate to what she’s been through the last four months. No one,” Democratic pollster Paul Maslin said. “And I will never begrudge her taking the time to resolve this issue.”
But others close to Ms. Harris say that given the current news cycle and the speed with which Democrats may begin making decisions, Ms. Harris, who tends to deliberate for long periods of time, will be forced to make an early decision. I’m thinking.
In interviews with Harris’ closest aides, confidants and prominent Democratic Party figures, it is widely agreed that Harris represents the “X factor” in the upcoming Democratic primary. Although some Democrats have ruled out running in 2028 and there are few, if any, candidates to follow Harris, she won more than 74 million votes and built goodwill among millions of Americans. I was able to do that.
The good news for Ms. Harris, allies say, is that the longer she has been on the short-term campaign, the better her standing within the party has been, which is unusual in electoral politics. Her allies believe the venom that surrounded John Kerry and Hillary Clinton after their defeats is unlikely to similarly taint Harris’ political future.
They say she will run as a more moderate candidate (a hiatus from the 2019 primaries) as the party looks poised to make a real big move toward centrism. He points out that this will be a benefit no matter what choice you ultimately make.
“As a political campaigner, she proved many skeptics wrong, and her standing among the public is as good as any Democrat with an ID with her name.” “There are,” a Harris ally told POLITICO.
In the 2028 poll, Harris’ approval rating is 41%, with Gavin Newsom, Josh Shapiro, Tim Walz, Pete Buttigieg, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Gretchen Whitmer, J.B. – Turns out he has a big lead over Pritzker, Andy Beshear and several others. It was in the single digits.
But Harris’ advantages are not unique. For example, a similar poll conducted two months after the 2016 campaign showed that Clinton had a large lead in 2020, with a majority of Democrats wanting her to run again in the next election cycle. I answered.
“I can’t imagine the party relying on her again,” said one Democratic strategist candidly, speaking on condition of anonymity.
If she chooses not to run in 2028, the earliest clue about her political future could come in whether she runs to replace Newsom in California, Politico reported in May. This is the first time we have reported on this prospect. At the time, her office strongly objected. But the mere thought of her running again in California froze the field and sent some fundraisers to the sidelines.
Those who know Harris are divided over which office she should run for, but running for governor and then pivoting a few weeks later to begin a presidential campaign is likely a sign that she will be running for office. There is a growing consensus that the world will not be able to do both.
Preparations for the 2028 primary elections will begin immediately after the midterm elections, so it will be difficult to do so based on the calendar alone. Harris’ aides also point to the governor’s demands on her time and voters’ expectations that she stay home and dig into the state’s mounting challenges, including the high cost of living, homelessness and crime.
“This is a real job,” said one person close to her, adding that after initially dismissing the idea that she might do it, she now feels it’s possible. insisted.
And if Ms. Harris does not run for governor, she will have to weigh the cost of moving away from at-large competition in a state where other high-profile positions are unlikely to come up soon. For the time being, both Senate seats will be held by relatively young incumbents, Sen. Alex Padilla (age 51) and Sen. Adam Schiff (age 64).
Advisors and aides of several other candidates say that running for governor will almost certainly wipe out all serious challengers, and that the Democratic Party also has a mix of candidates running and privately funded candidates with no track record. He admitted that he will run for governor.
The state hasn’t elected a Republican since Arnold Schwarzenegger nearly 20 years ago, and Harris, who will be about 70 years old after two terms, sees the governorship as the pinnacle of her political career. There is a possibility that he will continue to serve as governor until 2028. If there is a vacancy, he will run for president in 2032.
“She’s not one to make rash decisions. Sometimes it takes her a painfully long time to make a decision. So it’s important to note that she has no idea what her next move will be. I almost guarantee it,” said Brian Brokaw, a former Harris aide who remains close to her.
“Could she run for governor? Yes. Would she want to run for governor? Probably not. Could she win? Absolutely. She loves the job. ?I don’t know. Could she run for president again? Yes,” Brokaw said. “I wonder if she had a ton of skepticism from the beginning because she ran in a full-term Democratic primary that[in2019]didn’t even give her enough time to get into the Iowa caucuses.” And then she’s this year’s nominee?
“On the other hand, people can also learn a lot from past adversities,” he added.
