WASHINGTON – Vice President Kamala Harris will have an opportunity to try out the administration’s midterm messaging strategy and demonstrate her political clout on Wednesday at an event to show support for Gov. Gavin Newsom in the California recall election.
The recall has primarily been about the COVID-19 pandemic and dissatisfaction, mainly from Republicans, of restrictions that Newsom introduced at the height of virus transmission. It has drawn intense national attention and involvement from former presidential contenders, including Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
“It is in very many senses, I think, a preview of the midterms,” said Brian Brokaw, a longtime Harris political adviser and current Newsom adviser.
Harris is expected to campaign for Democrats in next year’s elections — a role her allies say she enjoys and is well-positioned to resume as her party fights to maintain control of Congress.
Her approval rating slipped over the summer, but she remains a popular figure among Democrats nationally, with nearly 84% giving her favorable marks in polling.
Brokaw said she is “somebody who is skilled at both campaigning for her colleagues and landing blows against our opponents,” calling her a “natural campaigner.”
Her visit to California to support Newsom comes a week after the Biden administration removed the last U.S. troops from Afghanistan. It was rescheduled after a suicide bombing killed American military personnel in Kabul just prior to her planned campaign trip.
The vice president’s office stressed that the focus of Harris’ remarks in California would be the recall election but did not provide additional details on her speech.
Democrats remain concerned about apathy among Newsom backers in the election that is being conducted by mail and hope the visit by the vice president, who won statewide election three times, will boost votes from Californians against the recall.
“Turnout is critical, we’ve seen that from the polls,” said Karen Finney, a Democratic strategist. “And that is why she is going to be important to help mobilizing Democratic voters to turn out in the recall election for Gavin Newsom.”
The vice president’s visit comes amid new restrictions on voting access and abortion in Texas — two issues that Democrats plan to feature in their midterm messaging. It also lands at a time when the Biden administration says it is seeing an uptick in COVID-19 vaccinations.
California had an increase of 7,523 COVID cases in its latest data, an increase of 0.2%.
Newsom has warned that the state risks a resurgence of COVID similar to what Texas and Florida experienced if he is removed from office and replaced with a Republican in the Sept. 14 election. The Biden administration has criticized the Republican governors in those two states over their COVID policies.
If Newsom loses, the recall election could result in a Republican holding the California governor’s mansion for the first time in a decade. Ballots must be postmarked by Tuesday or turned into a secure dropbox, county elections office or voting location by 8 p.m.
The polling website FiveThirtyEight calculates support for keeping Newsom in office is roughly 10 percentage points higher than the effort to remove him.
Ron Nehring, a former California GOP chairman and adviser to recall candidate Kevin Faulconer, said he does not expect Harris to have much impact on the election, which is less than a week after her visit.
“This is a dramatically weakened administration, nationally, we’ve seen that as a result of the Afghanistan disaster. Biden’s numbers are in the tank. I think the impact on the recall will be minimal as a result,” he said.
The White House said Tuesday that President Joe Biden would also be traveling to California “early next week” but has not yet provided details on where he will campaign for Newsom.
Harris will be on familiar ground when she arrives in the Bay area to campaign against the recall effort. The former state attorney general and California senator was born in Oakland.
Nathan Barankin, a former chief of staff to Harris when she was a senator, said that any effort by the White House to increase turnout would be welcome to counter any late swell of support for the effort to recall Newsom.
“We’re still dealing with a little bit of a Trump hangover here on mail-in voting,” he said. “We’re all operating on the assumption there’ll be something of a surge of Republican voters on Election Day. Many of them will vote in person.”
