Harris seizes control, clearing field, raising cash and slamming Trump

Vice President Kamala Harris moved swiftly to assert herself as the de facto Democratic nominee for president on Monday as virtually every potential remaining rival bowed out and a broad range of delegates endorsed her, all but clearing her path to the nomination.

With barely more than 100 days until the election, Harris immediately pressed her case against former President Donald Trump during a visit to her campaign headquarters, invoking her early career as a prosecutor who took on “predators” and “fraudsters.”

“Hear me when I say, I know Donald Trump’s type,” she said to cheers.

The vice president compared her day-old campaign to the civil rights and voting rights battles of the past, placing it on a continuum with “abolitionists and suffragettes.” And she said that Trump’s potential return would undo some of those victories and take the country backward.

“We are not going back,” she said.

Behind the scenes, Harris was moving just as quickly to take control of a sprawling political apparatus that just a day earlier had belonged to President Joe Biden.

Harris tapped former Attorney General Eric Holder, who once oversaw Barack Obama’s vice-presidential vetting, to oversee her choice of a potential running mate, according to two people briefed on the matter.

Two of Harris’ top political advisers, Sheila Nix and Brian Fallon, joined the Monday morning call of senior staff members on the Biden-turned-Harris campaign — a shift that showed her team’s widening footprint inside the operation.

Later in Wilmington, Delaware, Harris herself told the assembled staff members that she had asked the current campaign leadership, including the chair, Jen O’Malley Dillon, to stay on and that Dillon had accepted.

“We are one team, one fight,” Harris said.

Across Washington and beyond, there was widespread talk of whom Harris might bring in to supplement the current team. A former campaign manager for Obama, David Plouffe, fueled rumors when he appeared on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” and expressed openness to joining the campaign.

“All of us who want to see Kamala Harris elected president and Donald Trump not elected to the White House will do whatever we need to,” said Plouffe, who did not respond to a request for comment.

For now, Harris’ most immediate task is to secure the support of enough Democratic delegates to lock down the nomination. A Google form asking delegates to endorse her was circulating among those key Democrats, who include party officials, lawmakers, local activists and volunteers. A survey by The Associated Press showed she had more than half the support she needed, with the backing of 1,350 of the 1,976 delegates she needs.

The next step in the party’s formal nomination of Harris will come on Wednesday, when the rules committee of the Democratic National Convention is scheduled to meet to set a date for a virtual roll-call vote of the state delegations. On a call with reporters on Monday night, Jaime Harrison, the chair of the Democratic National Committee, said the party’s presidential nominee would be selected by Aug. 7 to avoid legal risks from ballot deadlines.

“We will deliver a presidential nominee by Aug. 7 of this year,” Harrison said.

The party’s convention is set to begin on Aug. 19 in Chicago.

“The first thing she is concerned about is securing the delegates that are necessary and making sure the team is solid,” said Sen. Laphonza Butler of California, a key Harris ally who spoke to the vice president on Sunday. “She takes nothing for granted. She is going to do the work and she is committed to winning.”

Harris spent more than 10 hours on Sunday working the phones, dialing more than 100 party leaders, according to a person briefed on her activity. On her Monday trip to Wilmington, Harris was accompanied by Tony West, her brother-in-law and a former top Justice Department official who is now the chief legal officer for Uber. West also spent the weekend with Harris.

Any momentum toward a competitive nominating contest appeared to melt away early Monday when a half-dozen Democratic governors quickly fell into line behind Harris — among them Andy Beshear of Kentucky, J.B. Pritzker of Illinois, Wes Moore of Maryland and Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan.

They were soon followed by former Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

What had been the Biden reelection website was taken offline, replaced for now by a donation portal for Harris as a new Harris for President logo was unveiled.

Democrats were delighted by the jolt of energy, with donors flocking to give after Biden’s exit: The Harris campaign announced Monday that it had raised $81 million in her first 24 hours, a record sum, from 888,000 unique contributors.

It wasn’t just small donors, either. The leading pro-Biden super political action committee, Future Forward, which has become a pro-Harris operation, said that it had unlocked $150 million in the last day with $60 million in new pledges, plus $90 million that had previously been frozen while Biden’s fate hung in the balance.

On Monday, more than 300 past donors to Harris gathered to discuss how to support her. Among those who spoke was Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis of California, a longtime Harris backer.

“People are aware it is going to be a battle every day,” Kounalakis said in a brief interview, “and we are going to be on battlefield every day.”

In a positive sign for her campaign, Harris appears likely to be publicly embraced by some allies who had shied away from Biden as he grew more politically toxic.

Sen. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin is set to appear with Harris at her scheduled rally on Tuesday in Milwaukee, according to Andrew Mamo, a spokesperson for Baldwin. When Biden held a rally in Madison two weeks ago, Baldwin held her own event in a different corner of the state 170 miles away.

For his part, Trump appeared to be somewhat frustrated as he watched news coverage of Democrats lining up behind Harris. He complained on his social media site that Biden was being cast as “heroic because he quit!” and that Harris was “totally failed and insignificant.”

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