I have no inside knowledge or insight as to whether Kamala Harris will run for governor of California in 2026. I’m not looped into her inner circle or decision-making process.
But as someone who has advised many potential candidates about whether to run for offices from president to city council, I do have some perspective on what she should be considering.
Having managed four campaigns for governor of California, I know the process is often harrowing and humbling for those who throw their hat in the ring. The state’s electorate is not on the whole very attentive to politics, picking up only bits and snippets about candidates, many of them negative, and the media is out to turn over every rock to expose every frailty, screw-up, inconsistency and verbal slip.
In Harris’s case, she is already well known to voters, having been on the statewide ballot eight times, and having served as vice president, U.S. senator and attorney general. But she will be tested on two issues having nothing to do with her service as a senator or attorney general.
If she does run, she will be pestered unmercifully about whether she would just be using the governorship as a holding room on her way to another White House bid. She would, of course, have to issue a pro forma pledge to serve a full term. The question is whether voters would believe her.
Californians have witnessed presidential fever infect their governors before.
Jerry Brown was elected the first time in 1974. A little more than a year after being inaugurated, he was gallivanting off to Maryland and other states campaigning for president. Brown then ran yet again for president just over six months into his second term.
Pete Wilson was handily reelected in 1994, then announced he was running for president less than five months after being sworn in.
A perhaps even more serious problem for Harris is the current orgy of reporting about the new book, “Original Sin,” which purports to tell the inside story of Joe Biden’s physical and mental decline — and the complicity of those close to him in covering up and making excuses for his lapses.
Some Democrats have tried to push back on the book by questioning this or picking at that, but come on, millions of Americans witnessed firsthand the pathetic and alarming former shell of himself that Biden displayed during the debate with Trump.
Already, announced gubernatorial candidate Antonio Villaraigosa (D), the former L.A. mayor, has very publicly taken Harris to task, demanding to know what she knew and when she knew it and criticizing her for not sounding an alarm about Biden’s decrepitude. Just wait until the press gets her in their sights.
And Harris will really have no good option: She will either have to throw Biden under the bus — an uncomfortable route given his recent cancer diagnosis, and her mum’s-the-word approach until now — or claim she didn’t witness the deterioration while sitting at his elbow, thus implicating herself in the cover-up. The emperor has no clothes, anyone?
With all due respect to Harris, there is also the matter of her own presidential campaign. From a Democratic point of view, it was a total failure.
She not only lost to Trump, of all people, but was the only Democratic nominee in the last 20 years to lose the popular vote. She lost all seven swing states — five of which had Democratic governors, and five of which had not one, but two Democratic senators. Democrats lost the Senate and failed to take back the House.
She actually got a smaller share of the vote here in her own home state than Biden had in 2020. She even received fewer women’s votes than Biden did in 2020.
Does any of that shout, “Hey, I should be able to waltz into the governor’s office of the biggest state as a consolation prize?”
Now, no doubt, a lot of Democrats in California would still support her, even if only as a big middle finger to Trump. But going for governor would inevitably result in a relitigation of questions about her flop of a run for president, as laid out in the best-selling book “Fight,” a detailed chronicle of the 2024 race that sheds light on many of the missteps and mismanagement of her campaign.
Again, I don’t have a clue about Harris’s intentions. But I do have some free advice about what she should be thinking about in making her decision. She’s welcome.
Garry South is a veteran Democratic strategist who has managed four campaigns for governor of California and two for lieutenant governor.
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