Kamala Harris has been laying low since losing the presidential race, relaxing with family and top aides in Hawaii before returning to the nation’s capital.
But privately, the vice president has been instructing his advisers and aides to keep his options open – whether it’s running for president in 2028, or running for governor in the state of California in two years. As Harris repeated over the phone, “I’m always in the fight.”
He is expected to explore those and other possible ways forward with family members during the winter holidays, according to five people in Harris’ inner circle, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal powers. His comments follow a remarkable four months in which Harris went from President Joe Biden’s running mate to the top of the ticket, giving Democrats a boost before they collapsed on election night.
“He doesn’t have to decide if he wants to run again for something in the next six months,” said a former Harris campaign aide. “The natural thing to do would be to set up some kind of organization that would give him the opportunity to move and speak and maintain his political connections.”
More immediately, Harris and his advisers are working to define how and when he will speak against Donald Trump and strengthen his role in the Democratic Party. Having completed his term as vice president, he is now about to lead the handing out of credentials in the November election which he lost to Trump, and then appear at the one and only presidential inauguration on January 20.
“There will be a desire to hear his voice, and there won’t be a long shutdown,” a person close to Harris said.
At the same time, Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, will have a long list to check before leaving the Naval Observatory for good.
They must decide whether to permanently settle in their home in Los Angeles, or start a base elsewhere. No matter where Harris and his family live, others around him have expressed concern about security, as his Secret Service protection expires six months after he leaves.
Following his meteoric rise in Washington and California, there are internal questions about stopping the federal committee from raising money. It will be the first time in two decades that the former senator and prosecutor has been out of public office. This means that he will be standing in his office and promoting his online presence without the planning of daily management.
“You just have to let them go through their successes, their failures or their mistakes or their achievements. This is personal,” said Donna Brazile, Harris’ friend and campaign manager for Al Gore, the last vice president who ran for president, lost, and never ran again. He instead did Climate change is the reason for his life.
Brazile recalled how Gore was given months before people asked for an answer about what he would do and that in the last few months Harris, despite his defeat, gained “a lot of political money. You don’t waste that by making quick decisions.”
While some Democrats lost the presidential race and were forced to fold, none so far have inherited the nomination 100 days before the election. Of course, most of the previous losses occurred after careful planning, and it is often difficult to recover. Harris, 60, is a junior.
“No one — no one — can really match what he’s been through the last four months. No one,” said Paul Maslin, a Democratic pollster. “And I would never beg him to take time to think about this.”
But others close to Harris believe that the current media cycle and the speed with which the Democratic Party can begin voting will force Harris, who tends to think long-term, to make early decisions.
In interviews with Harris’ aides and confidants, as well as Democratic luminaries, there is widespread agreement that Harris represents the “X thing” in the next Democratic primary. While some Democrats refuse to run for 2028 – and few, if any, potential opponents would abandon him – Harris received more than 74 million votes and managed to build a good will among a large group of Americans.
The good news for Harris, according to his supporters, is that his standing in the party has extended the length of time he has run his short, politically elusive campaign. His allies believe that the toxicity surrounding John Kerry or Hillary Clinton after their losses cannot affect Harris’ political future in the same way.
They point to him running as a moderate candidate (a break from his 2019 primary run) as a reward for whatever decision he ends up making as the party looks poised to make its first midterm run.
“He showed that many people were skeptical as a political athlete. And his public standing is as good as any Democrat with a name that he has,” a Harris aide told POLITICO.
A survey conducted in 2028 found Harris at 41 percent, a significant lead over others: Gavin Newsom, Josh Shapiro, Tim Walz, Pete Buttigieg, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Gretchen Whitmer, JB Pritzker, Andy Beshear and several others. they were in the same number.
But the advantages of Harris are not exclusive. Similar polls taken in the two months after the 2016 campaign, for example, found Clinton in the lead for the 2020 presidential election, with a majority of Democrats saying they wanted her to run in the next round.
“I don’t imagine the party turning to him a second time,” said one Democratic strategist who spoke on condition of anonymity.
If he chooses not to run in 2028, the first speculation about his political future may come over whether he ran to succeed Newsom in California, a poll POLITICO first reported in May. His office backfired hard at the time. But the idea of running again in California hardened the field and kept other fundraisers on the sidelines.
While there is disagreement among people who know Harris best about which office he should run for, there is an emerging consensus that he probably cannot do both – run for governor and then turn around and launch a presidential campaign a few weeks later.
The calendar alone would make it difficult, with the 2028 primary looming after the midterm elections. Mr. Harris’s loyalties also point to the needs of the governor’s term, and voters’ expectations that he stay at home while digging into the state’s growing problems surrounding housing costs, homelessness and crime.
“It’s a real job,” said one of the people close to him, protesting that at first they had rejected the idea that he could do it, but now they feel it is possible.
And if he doesn’t run for governor, Harris has to consider the cost of staying out of an open race in a state where other high-profile offices aren’t likely to come soon. All seats in the Senate will be filled for the foreseeable future by the current youth Sens. Alex Padilla, 51, and Adam Schiff, 64.
Advisers and aides to several others agreed that the gubernatorial race would effectively clear the field of the opposition, leaving a mix of Democratic re-runs and unverified donors to take him on.
The country hasn’t elected a Republican to office since Arnold Schwarzenegger nearly 20 years ago, and Harris, nearly 70 after two terms, may see the administration as the pinnacle of his political career, or he may pass in 2028 and so on. to run for president in 2032, if there is an opening.
“He is not a person who makes hasty decisions. He takes, sometimes, an agonizingly long time to make a decision. So I can guarantee you he doesn’t know what’s next,” said Brian Brokaw, a former Harris aide who has remained close to his circle.
“Can he run the catcher? Yes. Do I think he wants to run for governor? Maybe not. Can he win? Indeed. Would he like the job? I do not know. Can he run for president again? Yes,” Brokaw said. “He would have had a lot of controversy from the beginning, because he ran in the Democratic primary [in 2019] He didn’t even last long enough to be in the Iowa Caucus, and then he was elected this year?
He added: “On the other hand, people can learn a lot from their past problems.”