Inside Kamala Harris’ deliberations over her political future

The 21st of July looms for Kamala Harris and the much smaller world of advisers left around her. It’s the day she’s set to lose the US Secret Service protection that former vice presidents are granted for six months — six months from the inauguration that she believed would be her own after Joe Biden gave her 107 days to win the 2024 election when he ended his reelection bid last July 21. By this date, multiple people close to her say they increasingly believe Harris will have finally ended the intrigue over her political future and be preparing for a 2026 California gubernatorial run. Though she hasn’t made up her mind yet, several of those people tell CNN they expect an official launch would likely come in August or soon after Labor Day. Harris has seen private poll numbers that show her with essentially universal name recognition and strong approval ratings among Democrats in California, leaving her and advisers confident she would clear the field. But several declared candidates are insisting they wouldn’t quit, and one potential rival shared internal poll numbers with CNN showing more likely primary voters say Democrats “would be better off with another candidate for governor” than those who say Harris running would be “a good idea.” The survey included independents and Republicans because of the state’s top-two system in which all candidates, regardless of party, run on the same primary ballot. From informal meetings Harris has been hosting at her Los Angeles home, to inquisitive phone calls and texts she sends to current and former aides with links to articles about California issues, she’s been wrapping her head around what it would be to actually do the job. That wouldn’t be just living in Sacramento or taking a more hands-on approach than she’s tended to: The state is now facing a projected $12 billion budget hole for next year, even aside from national recession fears and having to make up for potential Medicaid cuts out of Washington. Managing austerity with cranky state legislators while battling with a president who is always eager to go after old rivals and routinely makes California a target will have a dramatically different feel from spending an evening at the Met Gala. Some have come away with the sense that considering how hard the job will be, not to mention the prospect of getting back on the campaign trail after last year’s sprint, is making Harris feel like she shouldn’t put herself through this — even if the grief over 2024, friends say, is finally out of her voice. More have come away with the sense that the scale of the problems the next governor will face, from budget shortfalls and artificial intelligence regulation to rebuilding from the Los Angeles wildfires and dealing with the decline of the local film industry, is convincing her that being governor of California at this moment maybe wouldn’t be a step down, and could allow Harris to pitch herself as returning to help her home state from what may be its biggest set of compounding challenges yet. That’s especially true, several have nudged her to think, given an existing field of local politicians who don’t have the same profile or experience she has. What, in these circumstances, could success credibly look like for her, she is asking — and will people be excited to vote for her vision of it? “She’s trying to figure out what it means to be governor,” one person who’s spoken to Harris told CNN. Just on Wednesday, term-limited Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom gave a long presentation on the revised budget estimates for California showing that despite the state’s rating as the fourth-largest economy in the world, coming shortfalls will be so huge as to end the abundant liberal spending that has nonetheless left the state with both housing and homelessness crises. “We don’t live in Plato’s Republic,” Newsom said, running through the numbers. “It feels like there’s going to be a real need to focus on doing the job – not what’s your next job,” said Lorena Gonzalez, president of the California Labor Federation, which hosted a forum with the gubernatorial candidates last week. “There’s some serious issues that California faces and will continue to face in the future, and that is being driven home more than ever because of the time we’re in.” Antonio Villaraigosa, who is making his second run for governor talking up his experience grappling with budget shortfalls as mayor of Los Angeles more than a decade ago, accused Harris of treating the governor’s race like a “consolation prize” while still entertaining a possible third bid for the White House. “In a state with the fourth-largest economy in the world, in a state with a deficit, a state with big challenges including the high cost of living, it’s the height of arrogance that they don’t feel any urgency to get in and share with California voters her views, her positions, her vision for California future,” he told CNN. Xavier Becerra, who succeeded Harris as California attorney general and then served with her in the Biden administration as Health and Human Services secretary, said that in the few weeks since he got into the governor’s race the issues facing the state remind him of entering office during the Covid-19 pandemic and trying to run the federal response, which he compared to 10 jumbo jets crashing each day. “Right now, you need a candidate for governor who’s willing to run toward fires,” he said. First, Harris has a book due, which is less a matter of struggling over the prose — she is working with a writer — and more about deciding what and how much to say about tricky topics like her relationship with Biden, their time in the White House and how her surprise campaign went down. Though the two speak frequently, the former president’s recent comments on “The View,” stating that he wasn’t surprised she lost and still thinks he would have won last year, gave a fresh churn to frustrations and her anxieties over how to address him. But Harris has begun what those who have worked with her recognize as her familiar lawyerly process of asking exhaustive, and eventually exhausting, questions, pushing aides for more research, more phone calls. “I have no doubt that if she chose to run for governor, she would be an exceptional servant of that state,” said Minyon Moore, who has been an informal adviser to Harris for years. “Whether she chooses to, I have no idea.” The 2028 factor It’s not just that Harris would almost certainly have to write off a 2028 presidential bid if she runs for governor — those thinking seriously about the run know this would be among the first questions she’d be asked, and that there would not likely be political room for anything but a full Shermanesque response. To demonstrate that she would neither be seeing the job as a fallback nor taking anything for granted, she knows, would mean pulling back from being actively engaged in any national debate that didn’t have a clear California connection, according to people who’ve spoken to her. Still, those in the Harris circle thinking through the possibilities assume that a race for governor would be covered by national media, giving her a sustained platform. And because just about every national issue has a California connection, in both the campaign and if she won, she would have constant chances to revive one of her favorite parts of her race that went wrong: tangling with Donald Trump — even if that might include sitting in a box together at the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. But with the Democratic Party’s machinations for 2028 already underway, so is Harris’ presidential campaign FOMO — fear of missing out. Friends have also been looking at polls showing her with higher name recognition than her potential rivals and leading in a state that’s a key part of the primary process for Democrats — South Carolina. For all the bitterness and disappointment over her loss to Trump, Harris has never had more goodwill among Democrats than she has now, they figure, and that is hard to walk away from without trying. She timed her first big speech since Trump’s inauguration to his 100-day mark last month — and while it was delivered in San Francisco, California politics were not the focus. Her husband, Doug Emhoff, has told a number of people since they got back to California that he considers her the leader of the Democratic Party. Harris has unofficially been toying with that role, in briefings and meetings she’s convened to talk about building up party infrastructure, asking about the information ecosystem and how Democrats should adapt what they represent and how they communicate as they try to imagine the country’s and the party’s trajectory over the next 15 years. She has been reaching out to new media figures she likes to offer advice on issues like retaining creative control. She has been fielding calls from a range of prospective female candidates around the country, though she will only speak to them before they declare, to preserve neutrality. Harris is weighing all that against knowing her day-to-day in Sacramento wouldn’t have any of the glamour or perks she grew accustomed to over her time in Washington. In conversations, she returns often to asking what she would actually be able to get done as governor — and will sometimes bring to a halt warnings about how hard the job will be with a sarcastic, “President was going to be a walk in the park?” A crowded field and a frozen race Technically, the deadline to declare a candidacy for next June’s primary is still 10 months away, leaving the race a distant thought for most voters. That’s not the case for the seven Democrats who are already running — a field that falls roughly into two categories: Those who may have political futures after 2026 and those for whom the race could be their final chance at public office. Some in the field have started to edge away from earlier suggestions they might clear the way for Harris. “I welcome her in this race, but I say if you’re getting in, get in,” Villaraigosa told CNN. “I’m ready for Kamala. I don’t believe she’s prepared to get her hands dirty. She’d like to walk in this race and everyone get out. I’m not going to do that.” Becerra, who spoke to CNN during a campaign swing that took him to Northern California, said he feels the race is already moving rapidly, and was committed to staying in no matter what Harris does. “Competition is good. I think everyone should have the opportunity to make a good decision,” he said. “But I made my decision and I’m in until November 2026.” Yet many interest and advocacy groups have already punted their endorsement decisions to the fall, and other politicians are stuck waiting on ripple effects from the assumption that several candidates would shift to other races if Harris did declare. “The race is frozen until she makes a decision, and I think everyone’s experiencing the frustration with that, and there’s really nothing that can be done until that decision is made,” a top Democratic Party figure in California told CNN, requesting anonymity to be blunt about the situation. “The ball’s in her court.” They’re also all waiting on another possible entry: Rick Caruso, the billionaire developer and former Republican who lost a 2022 bid for Los Angeles mayor, is actively polling and assembling notable supporters as he considers self-funding either a repeat mayoral run or jumping into the governor’s race. A longtime adviser described the process as “thinking through not just the campaign, but how do you turn around the state or city” after years of entrenched Democratic governance. Caruso’s timeline for deciding is similarly at least a few months off, but whether Harris jumps in has “zero factor in the decision,” the adviser told CNN. Harris advisers are also tracking a potential run by Trump ally Ric Grenell, expecting that it could come with an onslaught of Elon Musk money against her — but also the possibility of framing the race as standing up to the MAGA movement. ‘Legacy’ talk versus a state at a crossroads Gonzalez, the labor leader who is also a former member of the State Assembly, said that even with the primary a year away, Harris’ waiting is sapping time she could spend hearing from people in parts of California where she hasn’t campaigned in years and who don’t feel heard by anyone. “Part of the campaign that people don’t necessarily see is when candidates go to places where they’d never go as governor, or maybe just for a press conference,” Gonzalez said. Through an aide, Harris declined a request to speak about her deliberations. For all the growing sentiment that she is moving toward a run for governor, those who have been around her for years remember back nearly a decade when she did extensive groundwork for a 2018 gubernatorial campaign only to abruptly pivot to the US Senate race after longtime Sen. Barbara Boxer announced her retirement. Jerry Brown, who did two stints as California governor separated by 30 years — the second with Harris serving alongside him as state attorney general — told CNN when asked about her running that he considers talk of “legacy” to be “mostly a journalistic meme.” “A politician is somebody who runs for office. If they’re out of office they’ll be looking for ways to get back into office,” Brown said. “It is the psychology that I followed. And it’s what guided me for 50 years in politics.”