Election Live Updates: Harris Moves to Clear Path to Democratic Nomination
"Six key Democratic governors endorsed Vice President Harris’s bid after President Biden dropped out. Ms. Harris was scheduled to hold her first campaign event later Monday in Wilmington, Del.
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Vice President Kamala Harris moved swiftly on Monday to clear a path to the Democratic presidential nomination, scooping up endorsements from would-be challengers even as she faced the looming task of reintroducing herself to the nation as the best alternative to former President Donald J. Trump.
Less than 24 hours after President Biden dropped out of the race, a series of high-profile Democrats backed her candidacy, including Governors JB Pritzker of Illinois, Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Andy Beshear of Kentucky, Wes Moore of Maryland, Tim Walz of Minnesota and Tony Evers of Wisconsin. Several of them have been talked about as possible running mates.
Theodore Schleifer and Lauren Hirsch
About 300 past donors to Kamala Harris gathered on a conference call Monday to talk about supporting her presidential bid, according to two people on the call. There wasn’t much strategy talk on the call, which was organized by Stephanie Daily Smith, a top finance aide to Harris. The briefing was mostly to begin to organize the Harris network and rally the troops, the people on the call said, adding that one speaker was California’s lietuenant governor, Eleni Kounalakis.
Michael Bloomberg declined to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris, saying on social media that Democrats “have a chance for a fresh new start” and “more than enough time for the party to take the pulse of voters.” Bloomberg, the billionaire former New York City mayor and onetime Republican who ran for president in 2020 as a Democrat, had been publicly silent on whether President Biden should leave the race.
Harris kept her remarks short. She spent most of it on topic: commending the college athletes in attendance. She did not touch directly on the presidential campaign but commended Biden’s record and talked fondly about her friendship with his son Beau, two things that will likely resonate with the president. Biden often says he was motivated to run for office because of Beau.
Although Harris spoke at a low-pressure event, her clear and clean delivery removes a serious vulnerability for Democrats in their fight to keep Donald J. Trump out of the White House. President Biden had increasingly slipped and stumbled in his public remarks, fueling concerns about his age.
Harris talked about her friendship with Beau Biden, President Biden’s son who died of brain cancer. They became friends when they were both attorneys general, she said. Harris said that Beau would constantly express admiration for his father.
Vice President Harris takes the lectern in the South Lawn of the White House at a ceremony for N.C.A.A. champions, her first public remarks since President Biden endorsed her to lead the Democratic ticket. She starts by praising Biden. “Joe Biden’s legacy of accomplishments over the past three years is unmatched in modern history,” Harris says. “Yes, you may clap,” she tells the crowd.
Vice President Kamala Harris will hold a campaign event Monday afternoon in Wilmington, Del., the White House announced. It will be the first public event of her new campaign, and it comes as she races to define herself quickly to voters. The White House did not give details about the event, but the Biden-Harris campaign headquarters is in Wilmington.
On social media, Harris said she was traveling to Wilmington to “say hello” to staff members at campaign headquarters. “One day down. 105 to go,” she wrote. “Together, we’re going to win this.”
Senator Ted Cruz, at a news conference in Houston, attacked his Democratic opponent, Rep. Colin Allred, and Vice President Kamala Harris. Offering a preview of a likely Republican line of attack against the vice president, he said, “100 percent of the Joe Biden record is Kamala Harris’s,” adding that as the Biden administrations’s border czar, she had not visited migrant crossing hot spots in Texas. “She’s complicit in facilitating the invasion,” he said, borrowing a term Donald Trump and other Republicans often use when talking about immigration.
Senator Brian Schatz, Democrat of Hawaii, said he didn’t think that Harris emerging quickly as the Democrats’ consensus candidate was at the cost of a competitive process. “My view is this is a competitive process — she’s just winning it,” he said in an interview. Schatz, one of the younger and more online Democratic senators in Congress, said he was energized by the past 24 hours. “I have never, ever seen the Internet so ablaze with positivity and enthusiasm,” he said.
The Florida Democratic Party said on Monday morning that 236 of its 254 delegates to the Democratic National Convention had pledged their support to Vice President Kamala Harris so far. The state’s congressional delegation has endorsed Harris, too.
Representative Matt Cartwright of Pennsylvania, a Democrat in one of the most pro-Trump districts in the country, endorsed Harris. “Vice President Harris is more than ready to unify our party and make a sharp, determined case for what’s on the ballot in November,” he said in a statement.
The Black Economic Alliance, which advocates for economic progress in Black communities, is endorsing Kamala Harris for president. “The stakes of this election could not be higher for the future of Black economic progress,” the group said in a statement seen by The New York Times. “There is no better candidate, and there will be no better president, for expanding Black economic opportunity than Kamala Harris.”
Vice President Kamala Harris raised more than $50 million in less than 24 hours after entering the 2024 race for president, her campaign said, as Democrats welcomed her candidacy with one of the greatest gushers of cash of all time.
Ms. Harris’ take was part of an even larger haul collected through ActBlue, the online donation-processing portal used by Democrats up and down the ballot.
Shortly after President Biden announced he was ending his re-election campaign, former President Donald J. Trump on Sunday afternoon posted on social media a forceful attack denouncing him. Over the next hours, he posted several more.
On Monday he woke up and started fresh. “It’s a new day and Joe Biden doesn’t remember quitting the race yesterday!” Mr. Trump wrote on his social media site, Truth Social.
Maryland’s delegation voted Monday morning to endorse Vice President Harris for president, joining several other state delegations that did so on Sunday.
Former Vice President Mike Pence thanked President Biden for “putting the interests of our nation ahead of his own” in a statement posted on social media. “Now is a time for leaders in both parties to project calm and send a message of strength and resolve to America’s friends and enemies,” wrote Pence, who is not endorsing his former boss, Donald J. Trump.
On a Zoom call with reporters, Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia, praised President Biden’s record and said a match-up between Harris and Trump would be a “very, very exciting race.” He said it would be “a contrast between the past and the future,” and called Trump “yesterday’s chaos.”
As scrutiny turns to who Kamala Harris might choose to join her on a new Democratic ticket, Kaine, who was Hillary Clinton’s running mate in 2016, described the typical vetting process for a vice-presidential nominee. He said it had involved “two months of scrutiny of taxes, all taxes I’ve paid, every speech I’d ever given, every article I’d ever written. Deep, intense interviews with my whole family. It’s a laborious process — and here we are under a compressed time frame.” He said he expected that “the process will probably focus on fewer candidates.”
Six key Democratic governors endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris on Monday, choking off what was perhaps the last prospect for a serious challenge to her claiming the party’s presidential nomination.
Govs. JB Pritzker of Illinois, Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Tim Walz of Minnesota and Wes Moore of Maryland endorsed Ms. Harris within minutes of one another shortly before 10 a.m. Earlier Monday, Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky announced in a television interview that he was supporting Ms. Harris as well. All of them are seen as holding higher political ambitions.
Senator Joseph Manchin, independent of West Virginia, said on Monday that he would not launch his own presidential bid, a rapid shift in tone after a TV appearance earlier in the morning in which he appeared to be flirting with pursuit of the Democratic nomination.
“I am not going to be a candidate for president,” he said on “CBS Mornings,” ruling out a bid. “I am a candidate for basically speaking for the middle of this country.”
Another high-profile Democratic governor, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, endorsed Harris’s bid today. The shows of support by a series of governors — some of whom had often been cited as potential challengers to Harris if President Biden exited the race — mean Harris is likely to have a clear path to the Democratic nomination.
Gov. Tony Evers of Wisconsin, a key battleground state, has also endorsed Harris for president. “She can beat Donald Trump, and I’m going to do everything I can between now and November 5th to help make sure she does,” Evers said.
Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, the chair of the Democratic Governors Association, has endorsed Harris, saying in a social media post that he received a call from her. Walz is sometimes mentioned as a potential running mate.
Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois just endorsed Kamala Harris. He described their phone call, saying, “When I spoke to Vice President Harris, I told her that President Biden’s selfless decision came as a genuine surprise.”
The Democratic Party of Illinois has asked its delegates to the party’s national convention to not yet endorse Kamala Harris for president. “Our recommendation is that you hold tight,” the party’s spokewoman, Gwen Pepin, wrote to delegates Sunday. Gov. JB Pritzker, who has held presidential ambitions himself, has not endorsed Harris.
Speaking on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Gov. Roy Cooper of North Carolina, widely viewed as a strong contender to be Harris’s running mate, said he had spoken with the vice president on Sunday and “talked about winning this race.” Asked if he would accept the nomination if chosen, Cooper said, “I appreciate people talking about me, but I think the focus right now needs to be on her this week.”
Cooper also said that he had spoken with Biden on Sunday and told him that “he had cemented his legacy among the greatest of presidents.” He added that two of Biden’s character traits were on display yesterday: “fighting through adversity and doing the right thing.”
Vice President Kamala Harris has for years made the environment a top concern, from prosecuting polluters as California’s attorney general to sponsoring the Green New Deal as a senator to casting the tiebreaking vote as vice president for the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, the largest climate investment in United States history.
As she runs for the White House, Ms. Harris is widely expected to try to protect the climate achievements of the Biden administration, a position that could resonate with voters during a summer of record heat. A clear majority of Americans, 65 percent, wants the country to focus on increasing solar, wind and other renewable energy and not fossil fuels, according to a May survey by the Pew Research Center.
Kamala Harris sent out her first emails to reporters Monday morning with a “Harris for President” logo, another tiny indication that her team is moving quickly to secure the nomination.
On CBS, Senator Joseph Manchin of West Virginia made clear that he is “not going to be a candidate for president,” a rapid shift in tone after he had told CNN earlier Monday morning that he was “pursuing a process” to vet the next nominee and ensure Democrats can capture the center. Asked in that CNN interview if he would consider serving as Kamala Harris’s running mate, he answered with a flat “No.” “It’s a new generation — you don’t want a 76-year-old vice president right now,” he said, chuckling.
Manchin, now an independent, left the Democratic Party in May because he thought it had moved too far to the left. He flirted with an independent presidential run last year."
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