Former Vice President Kamala Harris has not even announced her candidacy to become California‘s next governor, but her possible campaign has already hit snags.
Despite polling finding that she is the front-runner in the crowded field of declared and undeclared candidates before the primary in a year’s time, Democrats are growing increasingly apprehensive about a possible gubernatorial campaign as Harris prepares to headline a fundraiser for the Democratic National Committee on Tuesday in San Francisco.
Although more Democrats blame former President Joe Biden for their current political predicament, some are finding it “hard to forgive [Harris] for running a failed campaign that let Trump back into the White House,” according to Democratic strategist Garry South.
That is on top of Harris’s strategy not to announce her decision regarding the governor’s race until the end of summer, as speculation mounts that she is also considering another presidential campaign.
“It’s as if she feels a sense of entitlement that allows her to take her sweet time, and not have to even put out a minimal effort to do the things other candidates have to do to run for governor,” South told the Washington Examiner. “She didn’t even bother to show up in person at the state Democratic convention this weekend. I’m sure as a former vice president she was just terribly busy.”
Claremont McKenna College politics professor John Pitney agreed Harris’s appeal among Democrats has diminished since she replaced Biden at the last minute in the election against President Donald Trump.
“Back then, she drew enthusiastic crowds because she was the alternative to Trump. Now she is just one of many Democrats who hope to be the nominee in 2028,” Pitney told the Washington Examiner. “Unlike Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020, she lost the popular vote to Trump, which does not help.”
But former California Democratic Party adviser Bob Mulholland defended Harris, contending she continues to be a draw, including at this week’s fundraiser, regardless of ending her $1 billion campaign $20 million in debt.
“[The late Richard] Nixon lost the 1960 presidential election and the 1962 California governor race but did not spend the next six years talking about what went wrong,” Mulholland told the Washington Examiner.
Democratic strategist Mike Nellis, who worked for Harris’s 2020 presidential campaign, similarly defended the former vice president but was less defensive concerning Biden. Instead, Nellis encouraged Democrats to “come up with a strong answer about what happened” with the former president after Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), for example, repeated last month that the party is future-focused.
“It’s clear that a small number of people were lying to a lot of us about what was going on, and I don’t think we can run away from that,” Nellis told the Washington Examiner. “It’s a real political problem that everybody’s going to have to take seriously if we want to win in 2026 and 2028.”
To that end, California Republican-turned-independent strategist Dan Schnur predicted Biden would be “an immense obstacle” for Harris as reporting from the likes of Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, published in their book Original Sin, underscores the depth of deception by Biden aides about the former president’s physical and cognitive decline during his last years in office. For instance, aides sought to put distance between Cabinet members and Biden to shield the former president from them and the public, per the book.
“Whether Harris runs for governor next year, or president two years after that, she is the one Democrat who will have no deniability whatsoever on questions of Biden’s decline,” Schnur told the Washington Examiner.
He added: “Every other candidate, including Biden Cabinet members, can find at least a semi-plausible way of not answering the question. But except for the president’s doctor and his wife, Harris was supposed to know more about Biden’s health than any other person on the planet. She will come across as either evasive or complicit, or both. There’s no way for her to dodge this one.”
Former California Republican strategist Duf Sundheim went further, reiterating that Harris had “a moral and constitutional duty to speak out about [Biden’s] condition.”
“Those who question whether her failure to do so will be an issue on the campaign trail risk trivializing a significant issue,” Sundheim told the Washington Examiner. “Her failure to address President Biden’s obvious decline has left a lasting stain — not only on her tenure as vice president, but also on her credibility as a candidate for any future office.”
In fact, the issue has already emerged on the campaign trail, with former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa last month claiming Harris and former Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, a declared candidate for governor, were complicit in protecting Biden amid his decline.
Harris has given herself until the end of the summer to announce a campaign for governor, a race that already has nine declared candidates, including Becerra, Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, and even former Rep. Katie Porter, who was criticized for creating a toxic work environment for congressional aides while she was on Capitol Hill. However, both Kounalakis and Porter have indicated they will withdraw their candidacies should Harris announce a bid.
Harris was more than 20 percentage points ahead of her nearest rival, Porter, 31% to 8%, in the most recent poll, a survey conducted by Emerson College Polling, Inside California Politics, and the Hill in April, though 39% of respondents remained undecided at the time of the public opinion research.
Harris’s fundraiser on Tuesday, promoted as a roundtable with the vice president, is being hosted by author and researcher Gretchen Sisson and Facebook co-founder Andrew McCollum. Harris delivered her first major address as a former vice president at the Emerge Gala in April, again in San Francisco, but has started making more and more public appearances, including during a real estate conference last month in Australia.
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“They are counting on the notion that, if they can make some people afraid, it will have a chilling effect on others,” Harris said during the Emerge Gala. “But what they’ve overlooked is that fear isn’t the only thing that’s contagious. Courage is contagious.”
Neither Harris nor the DNC immediately responded to the Washington Examiner’s requests for comment.