California Democrats debate what a Harris governor run could mean for them

CNN

3 days ago

Rep. Dave Min was chatting with reporters at the US Capitol when the California Democrat was asked about whether he wants Kamala Harris to run for governor.
Suddenly, Min no longer had time to talk.
'I have no comment,' he said.
Asked what he thought a Harris run would mean for his own reelection prospects, Min repeated, 'I have no comment on that, sorry,' and bolted onto the House floor, away from reporters.
Rep. George Whitesides, another Democratic freshman from California who beat an incumbent Republican by 8,000 votes, took a long pause before answering whether he wanted to see the former vice president run.
'I welcome her to the race. I'm just really focused on my own race, but if that's what she feels calls to do, that's her prerogative,' Whitesides told CNN.
As Harris deliberates on whether she should run for governor or hold out for another potential presidential bid, California Democrats are quietly asking themselves the same question. Her critics say that while she would be a favorite to win the governor's race in a deep-blue state, possible ambivalence about her candidacy could hurt Democratic chances in swing districts as the party tries to retake the US House.
Some top donors and interest group leaders insist that Harris will have to answer for former President Joe Biden, whose decision to run for reelection before making way for her remains a sore subject for Democrats, and whether Harris could have done more to prevent President Donald Trump's return to the White House.
Harris has plenty of allies who want to see her run. Several leading elected officials in the state told CNN that they do not believe the candidates already running have either the stature or experience to stand up to Trump's pressure campaign against California on everything from immigration raids to funding cuts.
'As someone who served as district attorney, attorney general and senator from California, she would have the experience, leadership and understanding of the state legislature to tackle two of the biggest problems in the state: the lack of affordable housing and a sense of a lack of public safety,' said Rep. Ro Khanna, who represents the Silicon Valley area and has had an uneasy relationship with Harris at times.
Rep. Mike Levin, who held his San Diego County district by 17,000 votes last year, said he believed a Harris run could help in 2026.
'She knows the state well, she knows the electorate well and I think she'd be a very formidable candidate,' he said.
The Harris critics — few of whom will put their names to their complaints — are doing their own math: She would probably win if she runs, they say, but if she doesn't generate enthusiasm or if she fires up Republicans, she could prove a drag on vulnerable Democrats like Min and Whitesides as well as State Assembly and State Senate districts where Democrats don't have votes to spare.
'There's no groundswell for her candidacy. In fact, I think it would only fire up Republicans and hurt our ability to win the four to five seats that we need to win to win the House and hold on to three seats that we just flipped in 2024,' said one California House Democrat who asked not to be named in order to speak candidly about a candidate widely expected to be the party's front-runner if she enters the race. 'She comes in with baggage.'
Part of the issue for many Californians, said Rep. Jimmy Gomez, who represents a reliably Democratic district in Los Angeles, is that no matter what kind of campaign Harris might run, people believe that being governor wasn't her first choice.
'Once you're the vice president of the United States, there's only one place to go. It's president,' Gomez told CNN. 'For me, if I was vice president and all of a sudden I lose, it would be a fallback to me. I hate to put it so bluntly.'
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has had a tough relationship with her fellow San Francisco-rooted politician. Asked by CNN whether she wanted to see Harris run for governor as she left the Capitol last week, Pelosi said only, 'I want her to do whatever she wants to do.'
Harris is once again earning her reputation for long, drawn-out deliberation.
Several people who have spoken to Harris told CNN she has asked them whether they think she should run. Some of those people, who spoke on condition of anonymity to disclose private conversations, say they have turned the question back to her.
She has also reached out to former California governors to ask what she could get done on the job, though not all have agreed to speak with her about it.
Harris canceled a long-planned August vacation, a move that one person familiar with her deliberations does not mean she's decided what to do. Besides talking about a potential governor's race, that person said, Harris has in the last few weeks asked her closest aides for research and memos that outline other options.
Among those options: Starting a 501(c)(4) organization focused on the information ecosystem and how to empower younger voters while rethinking institutions key to democracy, creating a political action committee to raise money for other candidates, and doing a listening tour of Southern states with a 2028 presidential bid in mind. Her thinking, the person said, is that she would have time for all of these if she doesn't run for governor.
While nursing some worries that Harris has let the governor's race take shape too much in her absence, confidants have also kept tabs on the other candidates, who include former Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, former US Rep. Katie Porter and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. Harris allies privately scoff at the insistence of several candidates that they'd remain in the race if she enters it or that they would retain much support if they did.
And few voters are focused on a governor's race when the primary isn't until next June. The top two finishers in that contest, regardless of party, will advance to the November 2026 ballot.
Supporters and rivals are not waiting for the fall book tour for Harris' soon-to-be-published memoir or a decision on the race to choreograph around her. Several pro-Harris Democrats have been passing around numbers from private polls conducted for others in the state showing her popularity among Democrats is much higher than any declared candidate. Supporters of others have been seeding chatter that people don't want her back on the ballot, often with data that shows a drop-off of support for Democrats across California races when she was the presidential nominee last year.
Burning over Trump's time in office, Harris is eager to stay involved, several who have spoken with the former vice president told CNN. She wants to at least keep open the option for another White House campaign in the future.
That's different, though, from delving back to the hand-to-hand politics that advisers feel this kind of run for governor would require, if only for Harris to stave off looking like she was taking the race for granted, and for grappling with big challenges in Sacramento that are getting bigger.
Harris' decision is not just intertwined with closing the door on a 2028 presidential run, but weighed against the quieter, wealthier existence that key members of her family have suggested to others they'd prefer.
Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove, a California Democrat, said that especially among fellow Black women she speaks with, 'they're still healing and they want to make sure that she is fully healed.'
'She should certainly run if that's the thing that she wants to do. She is certainly California's girl. We have been rooting for her for so long,' Kamlager-Dove said, adding that though she thinks having yet another big personality as governor is important, 'those decisions are incredibly personal.'
One factor in how vulnerable California Democrats feel about a Harris run wasn't in the conversation just a few months ago: the prospect that their districts may be redrawn in the middle of the decade.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott called a special session to consider a rare mid-decade redistricting at the behest of Trump and the Justice Department. Trump says he wants to eliminate as many as five Democratic seats in Texas ahead of the midterms. That's led leaders of Democratic-run states — including California Gov. Gavin Newsom — to threaten their own redrawing of lines to push out Republicans.
In California, Democrats who won by small margins could face harder races as they lose friendly territory to other districts.
California Democrats who argued Harris' weaknesses to CNN could not, when pressed, say any of the other candidates would be more of more help for down-ticket candidates. And Harris supporters point out that if the argument holds, any statewide dynamics are likely to be subsumed to nationalized energy in a midterm year when Democrats will be mobilizing to take the majority in the House as a check on Trump.
Rep. Mark Takano, who represents the Southern California city of Riverside, told CNN that not only does he hope Harris considers running, but that enthusiasm for her and for Democrats overall has resurged in the last few months in response to Trump.
'After the Los Angeles protests, the 'No Kings' march, any drift to the right among certain parts — Latinos, African Americans, Asians — I think that's been staunched, to say the least, and it's moved the other direction,' Takano said.
But Rep. Young Kim, a Republican who represents an Orange County seat that is once again near the top of Democrats' wish list to flip, laughed when asked about Harris running.
'Seriously, good luck to her,' Kim said with a laugh. She clarified she was being sarcastic.