Kamala Harris has been low-key since her loss in the presidential race, relaxing with her family and top advisers in Hawaii before returning to the nation’s capital.
But privately, the vice president has been instructing her advisers and allies to keep her options open, whether for a possible presidential run in 2028 or even running for governor of her home state of California in two years. As Harris has repeated in phone calls, “I will stay in the fight.”
He is expected to explore those and other possible paths forward with family members during the winter holiday season, according to five people in Harris’ inner circle, who were granted anonymity to discuss internal dynamics. Their deliberations follow an extraordinary four months in which Harris went from President Joe Biden’s running mate to the top of the ticket, revitalizing Democrats before finally crashing on election night.
“She doesn’t have to decide if she wants to run for something again in the next six months,” said a former Harris campaign aide. “The natural thing would be to create some kind of entity that would give him the opportunity to travel and give speeches and preserve his political relationships.”
Most immediately, Harris and her advisers are working to define how and when she will speak out against Donald Trump and reassert her own role in the Democratic Party. Closing out her term as vice president, she will preside over the certification of the November election she lost to Trump, and then appear at the future president’s inauguration on January 20.
“There will be a desire to hear his voice and there won’t be a void for long,” said a person close to Harris.
At the same time, Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, will have a long checklist to complete before leaving the Naval Observatory for good.
They have to decide whether they will take up permanent residence in their Los Angeles home or establish a base elsewhere. No matter where Harris and her family live, some around her have expressed concerns about safety as her Secret Service protection expires six months after she retires.
After his meteoric rise in Washington and California, there are internal doubts about the creation of a federal fundraising committee. It will be the first time in two decades that the former senator and career prosecutor will be out of public office. That means you’ll have a personal office and foster your massive online presence without the organizing principle of day-to-day government.
“You simply have to let them marinate in their own success, their own failures, their own mistakes or their achievements. This is personal,” said Donna Brazile, a close Harris ally and campaign manager for Al Gore, the last vice president who ran for president, lost and never ran again. Instead, he made climate change the cause of his life.
Brazile recalled that Gore was informed months before that people demanded an answer about his next moves and that in recent months Harris, despite his defeat, has gained “a lot of political capital.” That is not wasted by making hasty decisions.”
While other Democrats lost presidential races and were forced to regroup, none in the modern era inherited the nomination roughly 100 days before the election. In fact, most of the previous losses came after a carefully planned and often arduous climb to the top. Harris, 60, is comparatively young.
“There is no one, no one, who can really relate to what has happened over these last four months. Nobody,” said Paul Maslin, the Democratic pollster. “And I wouldn’t begrudge you at all if you took some time and figured this out.”
But others close to Harris believe the current news cycle and the speed at which the Democratic Party could begin making decisions will force Harris, who tends to deliberate for long periods, to make some early decisions.
In interviews with Harris advisers and confidants, as well as Democratic luminaries, there is widespread recognition that Harris represents an “X factor” in the upcoming Democratic primaries. While some Democrats disdain a 2028 run (and few, if any, potential opponents would concede to her), Harris garnered more than 74 million votes and was able to generate good will among a large group of Americans.
The good news for Harris, according to her allies, is that her standing in the party increased the longer her short campaign lasted, which is rare in electoral politics. Her allies believe the toxicity that surrounded John Kerry or Hillary Clinton after their losses is unlikely to taint Harris’s political future in the same way.
They point out that her run as a more moderate candidate (a break from her 2019 primary run) is a boon for whatever election she ends up making, as the party appears poised to make its own big move toward the center.
“She proved many skeptics wrong as a political athlete. And her reputation with the public is as good as any Democrat with the name identification she has,” a Harris ally told POLITICO.
TO quick field survey 2028 found Harris at 41 percent, a significant lead over the others: Gavin Newsom, Josh Shapiro, Tim Walz, Pete Buttigieg, Alexandria Ocasio-CortezGretchen Whitmer, JB Pritzker, Andy Beshear and several others, all in the single digits.
But Harris’ advantages are not unique. Similar polls conducted in the two months after the 2016 campaign, for example, found Clinton with a big lead going into 2020, and most Democrats said they wanted her to run in the next cycle.
“I can’t imagine the party going to her a second time,” said one Democratic strategist who requested anonymity to speak candidly.
If he opts not to run in 2028, the first clues about his political future could emerge around whether he runs to succeed Newsom in California, POLITICO first reported in May. His office responded strongly at the time. However, the mere idea of him running again in California has frozen the field and kept some fundraisers on the sidelines.
While there is disagreement among people who know Harris well about which office she should run for, a consensus is emerging that she probably can’t do both: run for governor and then turn around and start a presidential campaign a few weeks later.
The schedule alone would make this difficult, with the 2028 primaries set to take place immediately after the midterm elections. Harris confidants also point to the demands on the governor’s time and the electorate’s expectation that she would stay home and delve into the state’s growing challenges around the high cost of living, homelessness and crime.
“It’s a real job,” is how one of the people close to her put it, stating that at first they dismissed the idea that she could do it, but now they feel that it is possible.
And if she doesn’t run for governor, Harris will have to consider the cost of staying out of an open race in a state where other high-profile offices aren’t likely to emerge anytime soon. Both Senate seats will be filled for the foreseeable future by relatively young sitting senators. Alex Padilla51, and Adam Schiff64.
Advisers and aides to several other candidates acknowledged that a run for governor would almost certainly clear the field of serious rivals, leaving a mix of Democratic candidates as well and untested self-funded candidates to face her.
The state hasn’t elected a Republican to office since Arnold Schwarzenegger nearly 20 years ago, and Harris, who would be in her 70s after two terms, could see the governorship as a cornerstone of her political career, or potentially move on to 2028. and still. run for president in 2032, if there is a vacancy.
“She is not someone who makes hasty decisions. Sometimes it takes you a painfully long time to make decisions. So I guarantee you he has no idea what his next move is going to be,” said Brian Brokaw, a former Harris aide who has remained close to his circle.
“Could she run for governor? Yes. I think she wants to run for governor? Probably not. Could I win? Definitely. Would you like the job? I don’t know. Could he run for president again? Yes,” Brokaw said. “Would you have a lot of skepticism from the beginning, because she ran in a full Democratic primary where (in 2019) she didn’t even last long enough to be in the Iowa caucuses, and then she was the nominee this year?
He added: “On the other hand, people can also learn a lot from their previous adversities.”