(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) Outgoing Vice President Kamala Harris is not backing down after losing the 2024 election to President-elect Donald Trump. She is already hinting at her next political move and which public office she will tarnish.
Harris has informed donors that they “haven’t seen the last of” her and pledged to “not go quietly into the night,” according to a Sunday report by CNN reporter Edwart-Isaac Dovere. However, her aides are divided on whether she should run for California governor in 2026.
A gubernatorial bid would echo Richard Nixon’s decision to run for California governor after serving as Vice President under President Dwight Eisenhower and losing the Republican nomination for president in 1960 to John F. Kennedy.
While Nixon lost the 1962 governor’s race to Pat Brown, he went on to become the 37th president after winning the 1969 election.
According to CNN, Harris must determine whether she can win a competitive Democratic primary for the 2028 cycle. Some of her allies believe she might whitewash her reputation by serving as governor for two years. Current California Gov. Gavin Newsom is term-limited.
While other Democrats are already in the race for governor, some have expressed their willingness to step aside if Harris decides to run. She would need to decide whether to throw her name in the hat by the summer of 2025.
Others warn that running for governor and then for president in less than two years could look bad for the already unpopular vice president.
“If you’re thinking of running for president in 2028, the worst thing you can do is run for governor in 2026,” a former Harris advisor told CNN, stating that the vice president would have to view the governorship as “more of a capstone than a stepping stone.”
Another individual remarked that seeking the governorship would be a demotion: “Running for governor would be a step down, and it would interfere with her ability to run for president again. I don’t know if she’s going to run for president again, but a shot at running for president again is worth giving up running for governor.”
The speculation about Harris’s future comes just over a month after her defeat in the 2024 race against Trump. Trump, a former vice president, is the only man since Grover Cleveland to lose the White House and then regain it four years later.
During the campaign, Trump portrayed Harris as a flawed politician, lacking ideas and refusing to face tough questions by visiting friendly news outlets only. She previously lost the Democratic nomination for president twice in 2020.
Prior to her vice presidency, Harris served as the District Attorney for San Francisco, California Attorney General, and U.S. Senator for California.
