LOS ANGELES — Vice President Kamala Harris, in the warp-speed time it took to all but clinch the Democratic presidential nomination, has also nabbed a title that eluded her for decades — California’s favorite daughter.
Harris’ rising stock in her home state is most visible in the unanimous backing of California party delegates, who put her over the threshold this week as the likely heir to President Joe Biden at the top of the ticket. It was a striking display of unity from a political class that at times has been openly skeptical of Harris’ political acumen, and in a state where many voters greeted her first presidential campaign with a shrug.
“Our politics in California are tough. There’s just a lot of factions, a lot of diverse opinions. And those have remained to this day,” said Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), one of Harris’ most vocal supporters in the California congressional delegation.
The fact that the vice president got an overwhelming vote of confidence this week “is a testament to the work she’s done in the state, the desire to beat Donald Trump and the excitement around her candidacy,” Garcia continued. “It’s a historic moment.”
Harris was hardly unknown in the Golden State, having won three statewide elections before joining the Biden-Harris ticket in 2020. But with its vast geography and fractured political microclimates, California makes it exceedingly difficult for any politician to consolidate their influence statewide.
If Harris can maintain this level of support and cohesion, it could be rocket fuel for her campaign — mobilizing a vast network of donors and manpower for the improbable task of mounting a national presidential bid in a matter of months.
And if she wins the White House, it would catapult her into a rarefied class of iconic California Democrats such as fellow San Franciscans Nancy Pelosi, Dianne Feinstein and Jerry Brown. Also at stake is the state’s reputation as a subpar launching pad for the Oval Office; no Californian since Ronald Reagan — and no California Democrat ever — has successfully run for president.
Much of the exuberance among the state’s political class is reflective of Democrats nationwide, who have whipsawed from despondency to delirium with the belief that a November wipeout is no longer inevitable.
But even a close ally of the vice president, who like others interviewed for this story was granted anonymity to speak candidly, reported being “pleasantly shocked” by the home state response.
Harris always had a base of longtime backers — a band of elected officials, donors, labor leaders and other powerbrokers now eager to tout their loyalty. But she has, for now, silenced the in-state doubters who are deeply familiar with her weaknesses as a candidate.
One Bay Area veteran Democrat said the recent days have been filled with conversations with other political insiders asking, “Do we know too much?” about her over-cautious instincts, periodic word salads on the stump and persistent staff upheavals. Now, they’re trying to squelch their previous Harris skepticism.
“Partially we just want it to be true so badly because we really really want to beat [Trump]. And we do love her as a person and what she believes,” the Democrat said. “Combined with [the fact] that this is kind of an ideal situation for her: she got past the primary, she has a united party, she inherited a structure already built for her. [And] also, she’s been really strong and good recently.”
Winning over the Democratic faithful is one thing; winning the public is another. It is too soon to know if California voters as a whole are coalescing around Harris like the party is. If Harris can sustain a broader home state boost, that could reverberate down ballot to the handful of congressional races that could tip the balance of the House.
While they wait to see if Harris’ ascent is more than a temporary sugar high, her allies are savoring it. One supporter noted the satisfaction of watching Pelosi, who, they said with some exaggeration, “never said anything particularly nice” about Harris, appearing at a virtual state party meeting Monday evening to offer the motion that convention delegates back Harris as the nominee.
“I, officially, personally, politically in every way, have great enthusiasm for Kamala Harris,” Pelosi said on the call.
The good vibes extend to Congress, where California Democrats have been quick to play up their long standing relationship with Harris and reminisce about her presence at delegation lunches. Those with doubts about her viability have an air of matter-of-fact resignation.
“She’s not our best candidate, but she’s gonna be the candidate,” said one member of the California delegation who expressed disappointment that there wasn’t an open process for multiple contenders. But, the member added, “There’s no point in not getting on board.”
The unity is a welcome change of pace for Harris, whose political career was forged in the bloodsport politics of San Francisco. In a city dominated by Democrats, the intra-party rivalries could be fiercely personal. It was a town led by machine politicians — the brothers Phillip and John Burton, Wille Brown, Feinstein, Pelosi — who used the city as a powerbase to build statewide heft.
Harris was part of that lineage, particularly via Brown, her one time boyfriend and long standing political mentor. But her relationship with some of the giants of that era could be chilly.
“There was a new kid on the block thing,” said Susie Tompkins Buell, a political activist and fundraiser. “The Dianne Feinstein era was pretty elite. They just thought they had discovered it all and knew it all, and they weren’t as open to the coming-up generation.”
Feinstein dealt a withering blow early in Harris’ career by publicly calling out the young district attorney’s decision not to pursue the death penalty against a cop killer. They developed a more respectful working relationship as Harris advanced to the Senate, though the elder stateswoman nevertheless endorsed Biden over her fellow Californian during the 2020 primary.
But Harris tapped into a new wave of political influencers, particularly a network of Bay Area women with deep pockets and extensive Rolodexes such as billionaire philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, and Quinn Delaney, a major Democratic donor.
“She was burgeoning as a public figure exactly at the same time that women were being recognized as potential donors,” Tompkins Buell said.
Harris parlayed early buzz into a network of relationships, particularly in Silicon Valley and Hollywood — the twin power hubs that are now a prerequisite for any Californian with greater political ambitions. She exhibited a particular knack for the personal touches that cement political relationships: remembering people’s birthdays, bonding with their children, buoying the mood with chatter about food or office gossip.
Allies said Harris built a recognizable political brand through the state as she climbed the political ladder. California Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis recalled, during her first campaign in 2018, touring all 58 counties to introduce herself to voters, handing out palm cards that touted Kounalakis as “endorsed by Kamala Harris.”
“Everywhere I went, it was so powerful to people that she supported me,” she said. “Even if people never met her or worked with her personally…people identified with her and felt like they knew her.”
Her supporters say she proved her political mettle through underdog victories. She ousted her much-better known boss as a novice candidate for San Francisco attorney in 2003 and beat a popular moderate GOP district attorney from Los Angeles — the state’s most populous county — in a nailbiter win for state attorney general in 2010.
But her non-competitive races — reelection bids for San Francisco district attorney and attorney general, her 2016 Senate run — are where Harris really flexed political muscle, lining up early fundraising and endorsements to scare off more serious Democratic challengers.
“She’s really good at clearing fields. She’s really good at the whole shock and awe thing,” said Dan Morain, author of the biography “Kamala’s Way,” noting the parallels to how quickly she locked up the shadow race to replace Biden in recent days.
Harris started her 2020 presidential race with a similar tack: a flashy launch rally in Oakland, early fundraising prowess and a list of heavy-hitting endorsements that ultimately included more than 150 elected officials in California.
Soon, she plummeted back to earth. Her clunky campaign reminded longtime Harris watchers of her downsides as a candidate. She struggled to clearly define her positions and carve out an ideological lane in a crowded pack of Democrats. She would notch strong moments — such as her lacerating exchange with Biden over school busing in the first primary debate — only to backtrack with mealy-mouthed follow-ups on policy specifics. Her fractious campaign operation, beset by competing centers of power and disorganization, fed into latent concerns about her management skills.
Some of the most lasting wounds came from fellow Californians picking apart her in-state record. An op-ed by a Bay Area law professor that ran in the New York Times days before her campaign launch questioned Harris’ self-assigned brand of “progressive prosecutor.” The critique forced Harris on the defensive about her law enforcement resume, neutering the credentials that were supposed to be the backbone of the basis for her candidacy and damaging her standing with progressives in her home state.
“That’s just the fringe, but the fringe is pretty big in California,” said a veteran Democratic strategist. “So you have a Democratic Party with very mixed feelings about her.”
By the time Harris dropped out of the race in December 2019, she was polling in fifth place even in her home state, trailing Bernie Sanders, Biden, Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg. More than 60 percent of voters in the state thought it would be better to suspend her campaign and return to her duties as senator.
Since becoming vice president, Harris’ approval ratings in California have largely tracked with national attitudes about her job performance. When her favorability slumped across the country, it took a dive here too. The rise in prominence of Gov. Gavin Newsom, her longtime friend and rival for the top of California political pecking order, gave California Democrats another option to project their White House dreams. One 2022 poll found that more Democrats and independents wanted to see Newsom or Sanders as the party’s presidential nominee if Biden was not on the ballot, while Harris was the third-place pick.
The lack of home state solidarity is less a reflection on Harris than it is on Californians’ relationships to their politicians more broadly. Former Govs. Jerry Brown and Pete Wilson, as well as the late Sen. Alan Cranston, learned the hard way that winning statewide was hardly a harbinger for a successful presidential run.
In such a sprawling, populous state, it is much harder for officials to establish familiarity with their voters. While every voter in Delaware likely has a personal Biden anecdote, most Californians have had little opportunity to encounter their politicians in the wild.
“We’re a big state,” said Ben Tulchin, a Democratic pollster based in San Francisco. “We’re the fifth-largest economy in the world. And we’re not provincial with how we approach our politics. We’re not just voting for someone because they’re from California.”
Nor do politicians tend to seep into Californians’ everyday consciousness. Case in point, Morain said, was the anecdote of Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff who, as a lawyer in Los Angeles, was asked when he was being set up with the then-Attorney General, “Kamala Harris – how do I know that name?”
“A lawyer in Los Angeles didn’t know who the attorney general was!” Morain said. “We don’t pay attention to politics in California.”
Now, however, Harris is being thrust into a whole new level of notoriety, remaking her relationship with California voters.
“She didn’t have a campaign where she really had to bond with California. That’s going to change now,” Morain said.
The reason, he suggested, had as much to do with Harris as the state from which she comes: “We like celebrities in California and she’s going to become quite the celebrity.”
Katherine Tully-McManus, Nicholas Wu and Rachel Bluth contributed to this report.
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