Vice President Kamala Harris will campaign in the critical battleground state of Wisconsin on Tuesday for the first time as a presidential candidate after enough Democratic delegates pledged to endorse her, clearing her path to the nomination.
Harris has become the party’s presumed nominee after President Joe Biden withdrew from his reeelction campaign on Sunday, following weeks of party acrimony and internal polls showed his support collapsing in a battle against Republican rival Donald Trump.
Less than 36 hours after Biden endorsed Harris, she secured the nomination on Monday night by winning the pledged support of a majority of the party’s delegates who will determine the nomination, the campaign said.
BIG TECH
As a candidate for California attorney general, Harris reportedly assured potential donors that she was “a capitalist.” She has generally been seen as cozy with prominent tech executives and investors, the local industry in her home Bay Area. She attended the wedding of Sean Parker, an early Facebook executive. Her brother-in-law, Tony West, is the chief legal officer for Uber UBER.N.
She also accepted donations from Reid Hoffman, a prominent venture capitalist and co-founder of Linkedin, as well as billionaire John Doerr and venture capitalist Ron Conway. Big tech executives also supported her, including Sheryl Sandberg, then chief operating officer of Facebook, and Marc Benioff, the billionaire CEO of Salesforce CRM.N.
TECH REGULATION
As California attorney general, Harris sued eBay EBAY.O in 2012, alleging anticompetitive hiring practices surrounding a no-poaching agreement with Intuit INTU.O that led to a nearly $4 million settlement in 2014.
One of her signature issues was curtailing the distribution of pornography on social media, particularly “revenge porn,” a practice involving the posting of explicit photos without the subject’s consent. She took credit for a pressure campaign that led to Facebook META.O, Alphabet’s GOOGL.O Google, Microsoft MSFT.O and others taking measures to remove certain explicit images.
“I cannot emphasize enough how leaders in technology have stepped up,” said Harris at a news conference then. “I’m not suggesting any of them were happy to get a call from the AG saying, ‘Come in, we want to talk with you.‘ But they all did. They did.”
CLIMATE AND ENERGY
Harris’ climate and energy positions are similar to President Joe Biden’s. But throughout her career she has made clear that clean energy and environmental justice are priorities.
When Biden announced Harris as his running mate in the 2020 race, he emphasized her tough stance against big oil when she served in key roles in California, noting lawsuits she had launched both as San Francisco’s district attorney from 2004 to 2011 and then as the state’s attorney general until January 2017, when she became a U.S. senator. As California Attorney General, Harris won multimillion-dollar settlements with oil majors Chevron and BP over alleged pollution violations from underground fuel storage tanks.
She is a proponent of the Biden administration’s strategy to expand offshore wind energy and other renewables with lease auctions and subsidies, striking a contrast with Trump, a fossil fuel booster who has criticized offshore wind and other clean energy technologies.
Last year, Harris made her debut at international climate negotiations, announcing a $3 billion commitment to the Green Climate Fund and making her first major international speech focused on climate.
As vice president, Harris has also been involved in Environmental Protection Agency policy rollouts that tackled long-standing environmental justice issues, such as a multibillion-dollar program to replace lead pipes and lead paint around the country.
WALL STREET
Harris was known to be tough on big banks as California Attorney General. She walked away from talks in 2011 between large banks and state attorneys general over a settlement that would require lenders to help consumers hurt by home foreclosures and predatory lending practices.
Banks later more than quadrupled the money promised to help Californians reduce the amount they owed on their mortgages.Under Harris, California launched a criminal investigation into Wells Fargo in 2016 in connection with allegations the bank opened millions of unauthorized customer accounts and credit cards.
Several major Wall Street names are reported to be supportive of Harris.
A source familiar with the matter said that Peter Orszag and Ray McGuire at Lazard would back Harris, confirming a Semafor report on Sunday that said several Wall Street donors said they were preparing to contribute to Harris. Those expected to contribute also included Blair Effron at Centerview, Jonathan Gray at Blackstone, and Roger Altman at Evercore, Semafor said.
PHARMA
Harris has opposed health care industry consolidation over concerns bigger companies would lead to higher prices for consumers.
As California Attorney General, she successfully brought several antitrust lawsuits against drugmakers, health insurers, and hospital systems, including initiating work on a landmark case against Northern California’s 24-hospital Sutter Health system that was eventually brought by her successor. She launched similar investigations into other large operators in the state. Focuses included costs of out-of-network care and mergers at many levels of the system, such as doctor groups.
She won settlements from industry heavyweights including a $23.5 million settlement with McKesson and $241 million from Quest Diagnostics in a lawsuits alleging inflated drug prices and illegal overcharges to California Medicaid system. A long-time Affordable Care Act supporter, she also recently pointed to caps on insulin prices as a sign of Biden-Harris administration policy toward keeping healthcare affordable.
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
As vice president, Harris has been warned against the “existential” threat of AI and warned tech execs that they have a “moral” obligation to guard against AI’s possible dangers.
She backed an AI executive order from Biden that seeks stronger protections for consumers, singling out AI-generated scam calls and the impacts of unlabeled AI-generated content.
“Tonight, I am proud to have secured the broad support needed to become our party’s nominee,” Harris said in a statement late Monday night. “I look forward to formally accepting the nomination soon.”
An unofficial survey of delegates by the Associated Press showed Harris with more than 2,500 delegates, well over the 1,976 needed to win a vote in the coming weeks. Delegates could still, technically, change their minds but nobody else received any votes in the AP survey; 54 delegates said they were undecided.
The Wisconsin trip offers another opportunity for the 59-year-old former California prosecutor to reset the Democrats’ campaign and make the case that she is best positioned to beat Trump. Harris is scheduled to deliver remarks at a political event in Milwaukee at 1:05 p.m. CDT (1805 GMT).
She offered a sense of how she plans to attack Trump on Monday, referring to her past of pursuing “predators” and “fraudsters” as San Francisco district attorney and California attorney general.
“So hear me when I say I know Donald Trump’s type,” she said of her rival, a convicted felon who was found liable for sexual assault in civil court. Other courts have found fraud was committed in his business, charitable foundation and private university.
Wisconsin is among a trio of Rust-Belt states that include Michigan and Pennsylvania widely considered as must-wins for any candidate, and where Biden was lagging Trump.
“There are independents and young people who did not like their choices, and Harris has a chance to win them,” said Paul Kendrick, executive director of the Democratic group Rust Belt Rising, which does routine polling in the battleground states where voting preferences can swing either way.
FUNDRAISING WINDFALL
Harris has also been raking in campaign contributions. Her campaign said Monday she had raised $81 million since Biden stepped aside on Sunday, nearly equaling the $95 million that the Biden campaign had in the bank at the end of June.
Hollywood donors ended their “Dembargo” on political donations, as fundraisers and celebrities from rapper Cardi B to Oscar winner Jamie Lee Curtis and TV producer Shonda Rhimes endorsed Harris.
Meanwhile, Trump and his allies have tried to keep Harris tethered to some of Biden’s more unpopular policies, such as immigration
“Kamala Harris’ dismal record is one of complete failure and utter incompetence. Her policies are Biden’s policies, and vice versa,” Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung said.
Whether she can turn around slumping polls in key states remains an open question.
In interviews with half-dozen leading Democrats in Wisconsin, they said Harris offers the party the opportunity to push the reset button and animate voters who were unenthused about Biden and Trump.
Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley said Harris, the first Black American and first South Asian American to be elected vice president, will also help bring back crucial Black voters.
“Many of them didn’t come along because they were distracted by his age, distracted by his appearance,” Crowley said.
Replacing Biden atop the ticket has also revved up speculation about who might join Harris as a vice presidential candidate.
The short list of people being discussed included Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, and Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, according to people familiar with internal policy discussions.
