Inside KamalaHQ: How Harris quickly began planning campaign after Biden's shocking exit
WASHINGTON ― Kamala Harris was at the vice president’s residence when she got the call from POTUS.
President Joe Biden was ending his reelection campaign. And he was endorsing her.
Harris got to work immediately. Still in her Howard University hoodie, workout sweats and sneakers, she whipped up a statement. She placed calls to lawmakers, governors, civil rights leaders and union bosses.
She thanked them for their endorsements. She told them she planned to earn the Democratic presidential nomination.
She prayed with her pastor, Amos Brown III, of San Francisco's Third Baptist Church, and his wife over the phone. Harris’ husband, second gentleman Doug Emhoff, was not in Washington on Sunday.
Harris would ultimately make more than 100 calls over the next 10 hours, speaking to Biden multiple times as she took the reins of the flailing 2024 presidential campaign. It was her turn at the top of the ticket. And she set about making it her own.
Unlike her first presidential bid, which fizzled out in less than a year, Harris was at the precipice of power. She had quit that race before the first contest was held. But now, as the sitting vice president, she was getting a second chance.
In her first public remarks since Biden dropped out, Harris praised an absent Biden’s legacy at the White House.
"Joe Biden's legacy of accomplishments over the last three years is unmatched in modern history,” she said. “In one term, he has already surpassed the legacy of most presidents who have served two terms in office.”
She honored the president by also speaking about her relationship with his son, Beau Biden, who died of cancer in 2015. She said Beau often spoke about the kind of man his father is, including “his honesty, his integrity, his commitment to his faith and his family, his big heart and his love ? deep love of our country.”
“I am a firsthand witness that every day our president, Joe Biden, fights for the American people,” Harris said. “And we are deeply, deeply grateful for his service to our nation.”
On Day One of her candidacy for the Democratic nomination, Harris planned a visit to Delaware on Monday afternoon to meet with members of the state's delegation in New Castle County, U.S. Sen. Tom Carper said. She also planned to visit the Biden campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Harris wrote on X.
“One day down. 105 to go. Together, we're going to win this," she said.
Harris must still go through the Democratic National Committee process for the nomination. The party's convention rules committee will meet to establish the procedure to elect the Democratic nominee at a meeting Wednesday.
But the Democratic Party was already unifying behind her. Messages of support were streaming in. Her foremost political rivals were standing down on 2024 presidential bids.
EMILYs List, the Congressional Black Caucus, Reproductive Freedom for All – full state delegations to the Democratic National Convention quickly came out to support Harris.
With its convention just beginning in Houston this week, the American Federation of Teachers’ executive council called an emergency meeting and came to a swift decision to back Harris, subject to the approval of its members.
“We wanted to make our intentions known as quickly as possible,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers.
The afternoon was a blur. Sometime in the early Sunday evening, Weingarten remembers receiving a call from Harris.
She had left word with Harris’ staff about the union’s plans. “She called to tell me that she was running, and I said ... we've already taken the first step to endorse,” Weingarten told USA TODAY.
Chaos for Kamala Harris
Biden’s campaign aides insisted for weeks that he would not be dropping out.
Yes, they had conducted polling on Harris, but that was normal, they said.
“There is no consideration about passing the baton to her, because President Biden has made his decision,” deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks said in an NBC interview a week before Biden called it quits.
But the pressure from party leaders proved insurmountable. Former President Donald Trump had just survived a failed assassination attempt. The image of his bloodied fist in the air was instantaneously iconic.
His party was rallying behind him at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. Trump named his vice presidential pick, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, a first-term lawmaker who was half his age. Former opponents Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, and Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, made last-minute appearances on the stage.
It was a contrast with Biden, all right. But it was not the one that Democrats wanted.
Holed up at his home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, with COVID-19, Biden published a letter to social media. It was official. He was dropping out.
The letter thanked Harris for her work in his administration. But it did not include an endorsement. He followed up in a second social media post that made it clear he was giving his vice president the keys to their reelection campaign.
His announcement was shocking, although not wholly unexpected. In the weeks since the June 27 debate performance that prompted steep concerns about his cognitive ability, Democrats put a greater emphasis on the Biden-Harris campaign and the ticket including both candidates’ names.
The first campaign ad after a pause following Trump’s near-death experience? A one-minute spot on Black maternal health, one of Harris’ signature issues.
Minutes after Biden posted his letter to social media, former Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri said no one knew Biden was going to step back on Sunday. But she said that behind the scenes, there has been a lot of work to plan for a “what if” scenario that Biden no longer continued in the campaign.
“A lot of this work has been going on behind the scenes over the past few weeks,” she said in a phone interview on MSNBC. “And I don't mean that anybody … knew that President Biden was going to do this today. I mean that when you're this close to an election, a lot of people work ‘Well, what if,’ and those ‘what ifs’ have been tackled in the past few weeks, and I think there's a lot of people out there ready now to execute plans.”
Still, Harris herself appeared to have been caught off guard by Biden’s decision. She did not have a campaign announcement prepared. How could she without it looking as if she was pulling levers behind the scenes to oust her boss?
Her first public comments did not come almost two hours after Biden endorsed her nonexistent candidacy. It would be late evening before Emhoff, her husband, would release a statement. The second gentleman was in California for a pre-scheduled trip until Monday morning after a visit to Arizona on Friday, said Liza Acevedo, Emhoff's director of communications.
In a statement that thanked Biden, Harris confirmed she was running.
Amid the swirl of calls that immediately followed to key allies, the vice president made sure her staff was well fed.
Lunch was a menu of salad and sandwiches. Pizza and salad were served for dinner. Harris treated herself to one with anchovies.
She called Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Congressional Black Caucus Chair Steven Horsford, and scores of other political allies and friends.
Harris gets a second chance
Harris’ first presidential campaign ended in disaster. Her first two years as vice president weren’t planned well, either.
She struggled to find her bearings on key policy issues such as migration in Latin America and saw hefty staff turnover in her office.
At the time, it caused concerns among Democrats on whether Harris could step up to take over for Biden should the president step down.
And while many Democratic leaders rushed to support Harris, an AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research released days before Biden’s decision showed 22% of Democratic voters didn't think she would make a good president.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg ? two Democrats whose names have been thrown around as possible Democratic contenders in 2028 – issued back-to-back statements of support Sunday evening.
Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker waited until Monday. He said he wanted to speak with party leaders first. But he ultimately endorsed Harris and pledged to work hard to get her elected.
Buttigieg, a onetime Democratic presidential contender in 2020, said Sunday evening that he he would do everything to help Harris, too.
"Kamala Harris is now the right person to take up the torch, defeat Donald Trump, and succeed Joe Biden as President,” he wrote on X.
Newsom, who had been mentioned as a possible alternative for the Democratic nominee ahead of Biden stepping aside, also backed Harris.
"With our democracy at stake and our future on the line, no one is better to prosecute the case against Donald Trump's dark vision and guide our country in a healthier direction than America’s Vice President, @KamalaHarris," Newsom wrote on X.
Early money is yeast
Democrats who work closely with Harris were taken by surprise.
After a whirlwind couple of weeks in politics, EMILYs List President Jessica Mackler had hoped to take a quick break. Mackler was on vacation with her family and out for ice cream when she saw the news come through that Biden was stepping aside.
She missed a call from Harris on Sunday evening, she said. “But I'm sure we'll connect soon.”
Harris has been actively involved with EMILYs List throughout the presidential campaign and Biden’s presidency. Days after a leaked draft showed that the U.S. Supreme Court was readying a decision in Dobbs v. Jackson that would overturn Roe v. Wade in 2022, Harris spoke at the organization’s annual gala.
She spoke again at the organization’s gala in 2023 just weeks after Biden initially announced their reelection campaign last year.
Mackler said that throughout the campaign, EMILYs list had been doing research on how voters respond to the vice president.
“We know that she is a candidate that really does energize voters,” Mackler said.
Democrats expect that Harris will energize women and Black voters to get off the sidelines in the election.
Harris has been the leader in the administration on abortion rights, said Mini Timmaraju, president and CEO of the liberal group Reproductive Freedom for All.
“She’s been out there building the campaign around the Dobbs response, since Dobbs two years ago,” she said.
Abortion rights is a top persuasion issue, she said. And having Harris at the top of the ticket, “that is going to be incredibly powerful, incredibly motivating.”
As the vice president logged call time, the Biden campaign told the Federal Election Commission it was becoming a vehicle for Harris.
By 10:30 p.m. local time, BidenHQ, the name of the Biden campaign’s social media account, transitioned to KamalaHQ. The Harris campaign team leaned into recent online memes ? images, videos or text that quickly spread across the internet.
The campaign’s header on X was switched to a chartreuse background with simple black text that said “kamala hq” – a reference to Grammy-nominated artist and songwriter Charli XCX’s new album, "BRAT." The campaign also changed the account’s bio to say “Providing context,” a reference to a viral video of remarks by Harris in which she is quoting her mother.
“You think you just fell out of a coconut tree? You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you,” Harris said.
Win With Black Women, an organization that aims to support Black female candidates in elections, hosted an impromptu Zoom call after Harris threw her name in the campaign. At least 44,000 people called in and more than $1.5 million was raised for Harris in just three hours, the organization said.
Roughly seven hours after Harris announced she was seeking the Democratic nomination, ActBlue, the PAC that raises money for Democrats, said it raised $46.7 million from grassroots supporters.
“This has been the biggest fundraising day of the 2024 cycle. Small-dollar donors are fired up and ready to take on this election,” ActBlue wrote on X.
Contributing: Susan Page and Sarah Wire
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Inside Harris campaign: How VP is plotting steps in 2024 election
