Kamala Harris was closing in on the Democratic party’s presidential nomination on Monday after the former House speaker Nancy Pelosi joined a slew of Democratic heavyweights endorsing her run for the White House – and the vice-president gave a rousing evening speech to campaign staff, with Joe Biden calling in by phone to support her.
Speaking in Wilmington, Delaware, Harris acknowledged the “rollercoaster” of the last several weeks, but expressed confidence in her new campaign team.
“It is my intention to go out and earn this nomination and to win,” she said. She promised to “unite our Democratic party, to unite our nation, and to win this election”.
She leaned into the themes that will be prominent in her campaign against Trump over the coming 100 days, contrasting her time as a prosecutor with Trump’s felony convictions – “I know Donald Trump’s type,” she said – and casting herself as a defender of economic opportunity and abortion access.
“Our fight for the future is also a fight for freedoms,” she said. “The baton is in our hands.”
Harris’s nomination still has to be officially confirmed by Democratic party delegates, and the Democratic National Committee chair, Jaime Harrison, vowed that the party would deliver a presidential nominee by 7 August. A virtual nominating process before the national convention in Chicago, beginning on 19 August, is still needed.
“I want to assure you that we are committed to an open and fair nominating process,” Harrison said on a conference call.
The DNC had said earlier that a virtual vote would take place between 1 and 5 August, in order to have the nomination process completed by 7 August, the date by which Ohio law requires a nominee to be in place to make the state’s ballot.
Ohio lawmakers subsequently pushed back the deadline to 1 September, but party officials said they hoped to beat the 7 August deadline to avoid any legal risk in the state.
However, Pelosi’s endorsement, which she said was “official, personal and political”, in effect clears the way for Harris to become the nominee after Biden announced on Sunday he would not seek re-election.
Pelosi said: “Politically, make no mistake: Kamala Harris as a woman in politics is brilliantly astute – and I have full confidence that she will lead us to victory in November.”
The backing of Pelosi, a hugely influential veteran Democratic figure, was the most prominent of a cascade of endorsements from a broad array of allies.
On Monday afternoon, what has now become the Harris presidential election campaign announced an all-time record fundraising in the first 24 hours of a candidacy, bringing in $81m from hundreds of thousands of donors, most of whom were giving for the first time in this election.
Then Harris went to what had been originally set up as the Biden-Harris re-election campaign headquarters in Wilmington to talk to campaign staff.
Biden, who is recovering from Covid-19 at his house in Rehoboth, spoke by phone to the staff first, saying he would be out on the campaign trail for Harris and adding: “I’ll be doing whatever Kamala Harris wants me or needs me to do.”
When Harris took the microphone to address staff, Biden said to her: “I love you, kid.” Harris put her hands on her heart and said: “I love you, Joe.”
She said, to cheers, that as a former prosecutor, running against the Republican nominee, Donald Trump, a convicted felon also found liable by a jury for sexual abuse, she would “proudly put my record against his”.
If Harris wins the nomination and the White House she said she would put building up the US middle class at the center “of my presidency”, along with other priorities including gun control and reproductive rights.
Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, and Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, were both expected to follow Pelosi’s lead and endorse Harris soon.
Meanwhile, support came from inside Congress and beyond, with politicians, unions and other allies lining up. Significant endorsements came from the Democratic governors of Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin, four battleground midwestern states seen as essential milestones on the pathway to the White House.
Two of them, Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, and JB Pritzker of Illinois, had been mentioned as possible challengers to Harris for the nomination. Their blessing for her candidacy, along with that of Kentucky’s Andy Beshear, which also came on Monday, leaves a dwindling potential field.
Beshear is thought to be a leading candidate for Harris’s running mate if she wins the nomination, a shortlist that reportedly included the Pennsylvania governor, Josh Shapiro; the Arizona senator Mark Kelly; and the North Carolina governor, Roy Cooper.
All swiftly issued statements expressing their support for Harris’s presidential run.
On Monday morning, Harris had given her first speech since Biden’s withdrawal from the race, standing in for him at a White House event celebrating student athletes.
“Joe Biden’s legacy of accomplishment over the past three years is unmatched in modern history,” she said, paying tribute to his “deep love of our country” but avoiding talk of her own candidacy at that point.
Eyes now are on Barack Obama, who on Sunday paid tribute to Biden, his vice-president though two terms of office, whom he reportedly helped push from the race.
“We will be navigating uncharted waters in the days ahead,” Obama said in a statement. “But I have extraordinary confidence that the leaders of our party will be able to create a process from which an outstanding nominee emerges.”
Harris remains in a strong position, further bolstered by other senior Democrats including the Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren, who ran for the nomination in 2020; the Maryland governor, Wes Moore; and the Illinois senator Dick Durbin, the chamber’s majority whip.
In a tweet on Sunday night, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez also pledged her “full support” to ensure Harris’s victory in November, saying she “will be the next president of the United States”.
Last week Ocasio-Cortez had warned of “chaos” if Biden was deposed and claimed that a large number of those who wanted him out “do not want to see [Harris] be the nominee”.
Biden threw his support behind Harris, saying that choosing her as his vice-president was “the best decision I’ve made”. His campaign finance account changed its name to “Harris for President”, unearthing a $96m cash war chest for the vice-president to make her case to American voters.
She won endorsements from the leadership of several influential caucuses and political organizations.
Harris, if elected, would be the first woman and first person of South Asian descent to be president.
The rounds of endorsements followed weeks of clamoring on the left and social media memes pushing for Harris’s rise. Her supporters, dubbed the “KHive”, shared coconut emojis, a nod to a speech in which she laughed about something her mother used to say: “You think you just fell out of a coconut tree? You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.”
They resurfaced an ad from Harris’s 2020 presidential bid that attacked Trump for his comments on women and questionable business practices and posted copies of a check Trump made to Harris’s previous campaigns in California.
No coordinated opposition has emerged against Harris or in favor of any other candidate, a sign that Harris will probably be able to win the presidential nomination. The California governor, Gavin Newsom, another politician floated as a possible contender, said on Sunday he would be endorsing Harris.
Reuters and the Associated Press contributed reporting
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