After potential rivals, lawmakers, governors, and influential labor and advocacy groups all lined up behind Vice President Kamala Harris, a wave of endorsements from state delegations Monday evening pushed her over the threshold needed to secure the Democratic nomination, According to CNN.
She’s been backed by well more than the 1,976 pledged delegates needed to win the nomination on the first ballot, according to CNN’s delegate estimate — a moment that arrived on the first full day of her campaign.
And with no credible challenger emerging the day after President Joe Biden announced his exit from the race and endorsed his vice president, it was already clear that the biggest remaining question about the 2024 Democratic ticket is who Harris will choose as her running mate.
Harris, who will hold a campaign event in Milwaukee on Tuesday, staked her claim to the party’s standard-bearer role with an electric speech Monday evening, as she visited the campaign’s headquarters in Delaware.
The vice president informed staffers who had been working for the Biden-led campaign that they’d remain onboard — and that campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon and campaign manager Julie Chávez Rodríguez would remain at the helm.
And she laid out her case against Donald Trump, invoking a host of the former president’s scandals and legal troubles.
She pointed to her time as a district attorney and California attorney general, saying that she “took on perpetrators of all kinds.”
“Predators who abused women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheaters who broke the rules for their own game,” Harris said. “So hear me when I say, I know Donald Trump’s type.”
In her first day as a candidate, Harris raised $81 million, the campaign announced Monday, saying it was the largest 24-hour raise by any candidate ever. The huge haul underscored grassroots enthusiasm for a shake-up to the Democratic 2024 ticket. According to the campaign, more than 880,000 “grassroots supporters” donated, with 60% making their first contributions of the 2024 cycle. report from NBC News.
Democratic donation-processing site ActBlue called it “the biggest fundraising day of the 2024 cycle.” The Democratic super PAC Future Forward secured $150 million in commitments from donors in the 24 hours after Biden announced his decision, a senior aide to the group said. The commitments came from donors who were either uncommitted, unsure, or previously stalled, the aide added.
Four governors of must-win Midwestern states — Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer, Minnesota’s Tim Walz, Wisconsin’s Tony Evers, and Illinois’ JB Pritzker — have endorsed Harris. They join endorsements from Kentucky’s Andy Beshear, North Carolina’s Roy Cooper, California’s Gavin Newsom, and Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro. Many of those governors could be considered for the party’s vice presidential nomination.
Meanwhile, the cascade of endorsements for Harris’ candidacy that had begun Sunday afternoon accelerated on Capitol Hill. Harris has the support of more than 40 Democratic senators and nearly 100 House members — numbers that had grown rapidly throughout Monday morning. A significant one came from former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who said in a Monday afternoon statement that her “enthusiastic support for Kamala Harris for President is official, personal and political.”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, the top-ranking Democrats in each chamber, were set to endorse Harris soon, according to multiple sources familiar with the decision. Massachusetts Rep. Katherine Clark and California Rep. Pete Aguilar, the second and third-ranking House Democrats, endorsed Harris on Monday morning.
She also has the support of the political arms of the Congressional Black Caucus, Congressional Hispanic Caucus, and Congressional Progressive Caucus, as well as two key labor unions, the Service Employees International Union and the American Federation of Teachers.
Support for the vice president came across the party’s ideological spectrum — from moderate populists, including Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, one of the most endangered Democratic incumbents on the ballot this fall, to progressives, including Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
The hour-by-hour endorsements of Harris from Democratic governors, senators, Cabinet officials, and state delegations unfolded by design, with the hope of reaching a majority of delegates by Wednesday, two people familiar with the process told CNN. Harris beat that timeline on Monday.
“It’s a coordinated drumbeat,” a senior Democratic aide working on the effort said. “That sound Democrats hear is the party uniting around the vice president.”
