Sidelined and still processing her defeat, Kamala Harris looks for a way back in

A successful campaign for governor of California in 2026, Kamala Harris has told allies, would give her a prominent perch from which to push back against President Trump and defend Democratic priorities.

Kamala Harris felt compelled to speak out about what President Donald Trump was doing to the country.

But not enough to attack him by name.

Two days earlier, the law firm that hired her husband, Doug Emhoff, with a multimillion-dollar salary
had struck a deal with the White House to avoid crippling sanctions – an agreement Emhoff had objected to beforehand in private talks with the firm’s leaders.

Now Harris wanted to make it known she was uncomfortable with such acquiescence.

“There is a sense of fear that is taking hold in our country,” she told an audience of Black women April 3, in some of her most forceful remarks since November. Her voice rising, she added, “We are seeing those that are capitulating to clearly unconstitutional threats”.

Five months after being driven from public office for the first time in more than two decades, the former Vice-President is carefully feeling her way forward. As she plots her next move, she is navigating between a President who is using his executive power to crush those he sees as his strongest adversaries and restive Democrats who want their leaders to be the picture of defiance.

Friends, former aides and advisers say Harris, 60, still thinks she would have beaten Trump if she’d had more than 107 days to campaign – the implication being that former President Joe Biden should have quit the race earlier.

Yet some of her closest allies say she is leaning against another White House run in 2028 and instead toward a campaign for governor of California in 2026. Her political choice is binary, she has told people: she can run for governor or president, but not both.

Harris, who jokes to friends that she is unemployed for the first time, has explored options beyond pursuing electoral office, too. She hired the Creative Artists Agency to gauge interest in speaking engagements and a potential book. An aide has held preliminary talks with universities about establishing a policy institute, though some warned that could complicate her political aspirations.

But she has spurned early opportunities to get back in the game. While other prominent Democrats – including Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota, her former running mate – have asserted themselves in the party’s struggle to chart a path to a comeback, with town-hall events, podcasts, speeches and television appearances, Harris has given no interviews and has largely avoided the spotlight.

In her few public outings, she has only gingerly stepped into the fray.

“I’m not here to say I told you so,” she told the audience in Dana Point, California, on April 3, cracking up herself and the crowd.

Interviews with more than three dozen of Harris’ advisers, former aides, allies and friends reveal a politician – known, as much as anything, for her caution – standing at perhaps her most fateful crossroads yet.

After 22 years as an elected official, she must decide whether, or how, to continue her political career in an environment that was remade by her defeat.

Looking ahead, while still processing

Leaving last year behind has not been easy.

Harris has told friends and allies that she is still processing the November result, in which she lost every swing state and saw record numbers of Black and Latino voters, historically among the most reliable Democrats, reject her.

The garage of her home in Los Angeles is stacked with boxes and bins still to be unpacked, some of them untouched since she first ran for President in 2019.

But there is work to be done and a deadline before: former Vice-Presidents receive only six months of federal funding for an office, which means Harris will need a new revenue source by the end of July to keep her small team of aides employed.

She and her husband are weighing each new opportunity with the potential political blowback in mind.

One possibility: establishing an institute for policy and ideas. Brian Nelson, an adviser to Harris since she was California’s attorney general, has broached the idea with several universities, including Howard and Stanford. But some allies have noted that raising money for such a centre could, depending on the donors, create liabilities in future races. For the same reason, Harris has been choosy about paid speaking engagements, one of which is drawing her all the way to Australia later this month.

Emhoff has also hired CAA for speaking engagements, according to two people briefed on the matter. And he has resumed his legal career, taking a partnership at Willkie Farr & Gallagher that he has said is paying around US$6 million ($10.4m), according to three people informed about those conversations.

Even that has not been smooth sailing: before Willkie’s deal to avoid being punished by Trump was made public April 1 – it pledged US$100m in pro bono legal work for causes the President has championed – Emhoff urged the firm’s leaders to fight, according to a person briefed on the matter.

In separate remarks April 3, Emhoff told a crowd in Los Angeles that he disagreed with Willkie’s decision to settle over what he called a “patently unconstitutional potential executive order”.

“I believe we must continually ask ourselves whether accommodation strengthens or weakens the very foundations that we are sworn to protect,” he said at a benefit for Bet Tzedek, a nonprofit that runs free legal clinics.

Already, however, some Democrats have argued that Emhoff should resign, lest his job become a liability for Harris – chatter that an aide said has gotten back to the couple.

Harris and Emhoff have found time for fun, taking in the Broadway shows Gypsy and A Wonderful World: The Louis Armstrong Musical. They considered a bicoastal life, even picking out a rental apartment in New York, but decided they weren’t ready to sign a lease.

In Los Angeles, Harris has spent time with friends, attending a party before the Oscars and dining at Hollywood restaurants that attract paparazzi. She was photographed shopping at an Asian grocery; conservatives pounced on her use of plastic bags.

But she has joked with her husband that he should not get accustomed to so many home-cooked meals.

Out of public view, Harris has been busy, meeting with longtime supporters at Hillcrest, the Los Angeles golf club where her husband is a member; hosting gatherings of donors at their home in Brentwood; and speaking by phone with trusted operatives like Minyon Moore, a close friend and adviser, and Jessica Mackler, the president of Emily’s List. Her call list also includes Hillary Clinton, Biden, Pete Buttigieg and billionaire Reid Hoffman.

Mackler said she fully expected Harris to resume her political career. “She’s not going anywhere. She’s deeply committed to leadership in this country,” she said.

Decisions to make soon

Harris has focused on a few pressing problems Democrats face, according to friends and aides: how to connect with voters who share their values but not all their liberal ideas, and how to modernise the party’s organising, overcome misinformation and regain an edge in a media environment that suddenly seems to favour Republicans.

She has met with David Shor, a Democratic pollster who conducted a broad analysis of the 2024 election; spoken with billionaire Chris Larsen to discuss artificial intelligence; and met with media figures including New York Times columnist Ezra Klein, who argues that Democrats should embrace an “abundance agenda”.

Her team has also kept tabs on the political movements of other prominent Democrats. Staff members have asked Walz’s aides about his recent town-hall tour and how he has been received, according to a participant in those conversations.

But as Democrats practically beg their elected officials to muster more forceful opposition to Trump, Harris herself has been nearly nowhere.

In a rare move, she spoke by Zoom on the eve of the April 1 Wisconsin Supreme Court election to about 100 Democratic workers and organisers in the state, praising their efforts on her campaign and before the judicial contest.

“I know you all will never give up, and that we’re going to continue to wage this fight — in the voting booth and in the courts and in the public square,” Harris said, according to a participant on the call.

Tellingly, however, Harris’ offer to visit Wisconsin was rejected as a potential distraction during early voting, according to people briefed on the discussions. And even the Zoom call was kept private until after the polls closed, at the request of Wisconsin Democrats, who feared that reports of her involvement would divert attention from Elon Musk, the overriding target of the Democratic campaign.

Staying on the sidelines has allowed Harris plenty of time to consider her next move, however.

The next presidential race could kick into high gear just after the 2026 midterms, if not sooner. Already, some aspirants have begun plotting campaigns.

Some Harris aides believe she would automatically be the frontrunner in a crowded primary field, thanks to her name recognition and wide network of donors and supporters.

But many more Democrats argue against another presidential bid: the 2028 election will be a contest for the party’s future in which she would be perceived as a figure of the past, the reasoning goes. Others say Democrats will not nominate another woman, fearing the country is too sexist for her to win.

By contrast, some people close to Harris believe she would effectively glide to the California governor’s mansion when the seat opens up next year. Lieutenant Governor Eleni Kounalakis, a close friend, is expected to drop out of the race if Harris enters it. And former Representative Katie Porter, the Orange County Democrat who announced her campaign for governor last month, has said that Harris would most likely have a “near field-clearing effect”.

Others are less certain. Xavier Becerra, Biden’s former health secretary and a former California attorney-general, got into the race last week and said he would not withdraw if Harris joined it.

Another Democratic candidate, former Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa of Los Angeles – who ceded the field to Harris when she ran for the Senate in 2016 – has publicly pushed her to make up her mind. He has said the 2026 primary would not be a “coronation”.

Harris has good reason for leaning toward a run for governor, according to people who have spoken with her. She has watched with horror as institutions Democrats care about – universities, law firms and more – have caved under pressure. And she believes that as governor of the nation’s most populous blue state, she would have a powerful platform from which to push back against Trump and his policies, and to defend Democratic priorities and values.

She was also confused, the people said, by what she saw as the slowness and inadequacy of the initial response to this year’s Los Angeles wildfires by Democratic leaders in her home state. Harris has kept tabs on the response to the fires, meeting with firefighters and evacuees and touring the damage. Her own four-bedroom home in Brentwood was inside the evacuation zone but suffered no significant damage.

Terry McAuliffe, the former Virginia Governor and Democratic national chair, said he had spoken with Harris in Washington in January and encouraged her to run for governor, and believed that she would.

“I told her, ‘It’s a great job,‘” he said. “‘You get out of bed, you sign executive orders, you get a lot of stuff done.‘”

Harris also got a bit of encouragement to get into the governor’s race – and a bit of advice – from a presumably less welcome source.

“Let her run,” Trump said in a podcast interview last month. “One thing she’s going to do, she’s got to start doing interviews.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Written by: Lisa Lerer, Tyler Pager, Shane Goldmacher and Erica L. Green

Photographs by: Kenny Holston, Alisha Jucevic and Valaurian Waller

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