Kamala Harris has said she is looking forward to “formally accepting the [presidential] nomination” of the Democratic party after she earned enough support from delegates including hundreds from her native California.
“When I announced my campaign for President, I said I intended to go out and earn this nomination,” she said in a statement late Monday.
“Tonight, I am proud to have secured the broad support needed to become our party’s nominee, and as a daughter of California, I am proud that my home state’s delegation helped put our campaign over the top. I look forward to formally accepting the nomination soon.”
Speaker emerita Nancy Pelosi made the motion to endorse Harris for president at a virtual meeting of California’s DNC delegation on Monday evening, a spokesperson confirmed.
California just voted unanimously to nominate our very own @KamalaHarris for President. Our delegates have put the VP over the required number she needs to be our nominee going into convention!
— Robert Garcia (@RobertGarcia) July 23, 2024
Pelosi, who represents San Francisco in Congress, announced that with the endorsement of California’s delegation, Harris had earned enough delegates to win the Democratic nomination for president in August.
Earlier on Monday, top Democrats rallied to support Harris in their bid to defeat Republican Donald Trump.
Harris was headed to the battleground state of Wisconsin on Tuesday as her campaign for the White House kicks into high gear. The event in Milwaukee will be her first full-fledged campaign event since announcing her candidacy.
“This election will present a clear choice between two different visions,” she said in her statement.
“Donald Trump wants to take our country back to a time before many of us had full freedoms and equal rights. I believe in a future that strengthens our democracy, protects reproductive freedom and ensures every person has the opportunity to not just get by, but to get ahead.”
Joe Biden’s departure freed his delegates to vote for whomever they choose at next month’s convention. And Harris, whom Biden backed after ending his candidacy, worked quickly to secure support from a majority.
Big-name endorsements on Monday, including from governors Wes Moore of Maryland, Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, JB Pritzker of Illinois and Andy Beshear of Kentucky, left a vanishing list of potential rivals.
According to an Associated Press tally, Harris had 2,668 delegates, well beyond the simple majority of 1,976 needed to clinch the nomination on the first ballot.
The survey is unofficial, the AP said, as Democratic delegates are free to vote for the candidate of their choice when the party formally chooses its candidate. Delegates could still change their minds before 7 August but nobody else received any votes in the AP survey, and 57 delegates said they were undecided.
Pelosi, who had been one of the notable holdouts, initially encouraging a primary to strengthen the eventual nominee, said she was lending her “enthusiastic support” to Harris’s effort to lead the party.
A tweet late on Monday night announced that Pelosi’s office had confirmed Harris’s endorsement.
HARRIS has enough endorsements to get the nomination, per Speaker Emerita Pelosi’s office.
“Within the last hour, Speaker Pelosi made the motion to endorse Kamala Harris for President at a virtual meeting of California’s DNC delegation.”
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— Lisa Desjardins (@LisaDNews) July 23, 2024
Democratic National Committee chairman Jaime Harrison vowed that the party would deliver a presidential nominee by 7 August. A virtual nominating process before the national convention in Chicago, beginning on 19 August, is still needed.
“I want to assure you that we are committed to an open and fair nominating process,” Harrison said on a conference call.
The DNC had said earlier that a virtual vote would take place between 1 and 5 August, in order to have the nomination process completed by 7 August, the date by which Ohio law had required a nominee to be in place to make the state’s ballot.
Ohio lawmakers subsequently pushed back the deadline to 1 September, but party officials said they hoped to beat the 7 August deadline to avoid any legal risk in the state.
Winning the nomination is only the first item on a staggering political to-do list for Harris after Biden’s decision to exit the race, which she learned about on a Sunday morning call with the president.
She must also pick a running mate and pivot a massive political operation to boost her candidacy instead of Biden’s with just over 100 days until election day.
