WASHINGTON – The crowds are excited. Campaign donations are flooding. Volunteers are showing up in droves at field offices.
After a quiet two-week start to the campaign, Vice President Kamala Harris is heading into a pivotal week that includes his most critical decision yet — choosing a running mate — as he struggles to keep that early political momentum alive.
Harris, a former prosecutor known for being deliberative, effectively has until Tuesday to select who will be her No. 2 on a list that has been reduced to four governors, a senator and a Cabinet official who was also one of his enemies in 2020. It’s a high pressure decision this usually lasts for several months, but in this case it is compressed into a matter of just weeks.
From there, Harris and her running mate will launch an aggressive campaign, seven states battlefield tour which begins in Philadelphia on Tuesday and passes through Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada. His first rallies attracted thousands of enthusiastic people.
Campaign officials are aware that the momentum may be fleeting and are working to capitalize on the energy now while managing expectations by continuing to emphasize the race with the Republican nominee. donald trump It is tight. But the strong rollout allowed Harris’ campaign to put back into play a number of states they feared would be out of reach when President Trump Joe Biden remained in top of ticket.
Harris will face new tests in the coming days as she makes important decisions — including her choice for vice president, with the potential to disappoint elements of the coalition.
She has not faced the level of scrutiny that presidential candidates typically face. Although she maintains a busy schedule of public appearances, she rarely answers questions from the press and does not give in-depth interviews. After four years defending Biden’s positions, she will have to define her own positions on the political controversies that divide Democrats.
Harris’ message is getting clearer every day. Her first television ad last week portrayed her as “fearless” and emphasized what has emerged as a rallying cry for her campaign: “We will not back down.”
She also repeatedly emphasizes the concept of freedom, focusing not only on Trump as a threat to democracy but also on the freedom to have an abortion and to be safe from gun violence.
Meanwhile, her experience as a prosecutor is emerging as a central dividing line with Trump. In rallies and advertisements, she contrasts her record of going after hardened criminals and corporate wrongdoers with Trump’s civil indictments, convictions and trials.
Trump, for his part, is rushing to define her as a soft-on-crime San Francisco liberal who was tasked with securing the border as vice president but failed. He blames her and Biden for inflation during his term. He also went after her personally, questioning her intelligence and biracial identity.
As she and her TBD running mate hit the swing states next week, the vice president is planning a renewed offensive in Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina and Georgia. The Biden campaign had long named them among her top targets, but she began abandoning hopes in favor of bolstering the so-called “blue wall” states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Campaign Manager Julie Chávez Rodríguez it is now focusing more on Arizona and Nevada because of what officials say is Harris’ increased competitiveness against Trump in the two states, both of which Biden won four years ago.
“We are the underdogs in this race,” campaign swing states director Dan Kanninen told reporters last week, repeating a phrase that Harris herself emphasized. “But the groundswell of support around the vice president is real and significant. Our task now is to translate this enthusiasm into action.”
Harris’ campaign says volunteers made 2.3 million phone calls, knocked on 172,000 doors and sent nearly 2.9 million text messages to voters in swing states over 12 days. More than 130,000 people signed up for an online organizing event with Harris and 750,000 people signed up for a campaign event for the first time, according to a memo from Kanninen.
Harris herself remains quiet in Washington this weekend, with interviews underway for about half a dozen potential running mates who have effectively done public auditions through media interviews. The candidates on his interview list, all white men, are governors. Andy Beshear of Kentucky, JB Pritzker of Illinois, Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and Tim Walz of Minnesota, as well as Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, according to people with knowledge of Harris’ selection process.
Harris has revealed little about her deliberations, but will no doubt draw on her own experience of being vetted and eventually chosen as Biden’s running mate four years ago. Several Democratic constituencies are lobbying fervently for — or in some cases, against — some of the names on the list of vice presidential candidates, based on geographic considerations, past policy positions and voter sentiment.
On Monday, Harris will formally become the Democratic nominee when online voting among delegates is completed. There’s no suspense in this: Democratic National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison said in a virtual meeting with supporters on Friday that Harris had already secured enough delegates to become the candidate.
Friday’s hastily announced online meeting at times felt like a marathon and was plagued by technical problems, including audio problems — a reminder that in some ways, Harris’ campaign remains a bootstrapped operation.
Another big moment to come will be a debate between Harris and Trump – or not.
The two fought over the weekend about when and where to debate. Trump dropped out of a Sept. 10 debate on ABC in favor of a Sept. 4 debate on Fox News. Harris’ campaign says it is sticking to the original date, and Trump posted on social media: “I will see her on September 4th or I won’t see her at all.”
