Former Vice President Kamala Harris is revving up her involvement in the midterms. While some Democrats are eager to embrace her, others want her to steer clear.<\/p>\n
Harris is planning to attend a canvass launch with Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford for his gubernatorial bid next month in Las Vegas, his campaign told POLITICO.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs anyone who is interested in 2028 should do, Kamala Harris will be coming through. We are a pivotal state in the presidential election,\u201d Ford said in an interview in Las Vegas on Tuesday. \u201c2028 starts right now in 2026.\u201d<\/p>\n
Harris\u2019 plans to visit Nevada signal yet another step into the fray of the midterms \u2014 and the national political stage. On Tuesday, she publicly backed Rep. Chris Pappas<\/u><\/a> in his Senate bid in New Hampshire, a must-hold seat for the party in a state that Harris narrowly won<\/u><\/a> in 2024. And she waded into three House races, two Democratic-leaning districts in her home<\/u><\/a> state<\/u><\/a> and a solidly Republican one in Tennessee<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n Harris had kept a relatively low profile so far on the campaign trail. Some Democrats prefer it that way.<\/p>\n Iowa\u2019s two most prominent Democratic candidates have said they do not want Harris to campaign for them. Alaska\u2019s Democratic Senate nominee rejected a fundraising solicitation Harris sent on her behalf. And a swing-district Democrat in Wisconsin and a long-shot Senate hopeful in Kansas both told POLITICO they would prefer Harris keep her distance.<\/p>\n \u201cI received 9,000 more votes than Harris in 2024,\u201d Rebecca Cooke, the Democratic challenger to Republican Rep. Derrick Van Orden in western Wisconsin, said in a statement when asked by POLITICO. \u201cI don\u2019t need anyone to come and campaign with me in my district. I do the work of building relationships \u2014 including across the aisle \u2014 on my own.\u201d<\/p>\n The arm\u2019s-length treatment isn\u2019t necessarily surprising: red-state and rural Democrats have long been hesitant to tie themselves to national Democratic figures. They are increasingly distancing themselves now as polls show the Democratic brand remains underwater even as President Donald Trump\u2019s own standing with voters continues to drop. Trump\u2019s approval hit a weak 36 percent in a recent poll conducted by The Economic and YouGov<\/u><\/a>, while a separate survey <\/u><\/a>from the pollster showed over 56 percent of registered voters disapproved of the Democratic Party.<\/p>\n Harris\u2019 favorability numbers at the end of last year only stood at 42 percent<\/u><\/a>. As the party\u2019s most recent presidential nominee, she is one of its most prominent avatars.<\/p>\n A Cooke campaign aide, granted anonymity to discuss internal conversations, said Cooke\u2019s team has turned down campaign offers from other national Democrats as she focuses on making a personal case to voters in one of the party\u2019s top target districts this fall.<\/p>\n Cooke hasn\u2019t warded off everyone, however: During her primary she leaned heavily into support from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), featuring him in campaign ads; his team also sent texts to help turn out voters. She also has accepted endorsements from potential 2028 candidates like former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Sens. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) and Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.).<\/p>\n Other high-profile Democrats, like California Gov. Gavin Newsom<\/u><\/a>, have similarly stayed relatively low-key with their own endorsements so far. He\u2019s faced some Democratic distancing himself: Stefany Shaheen, who is running for a House seat in New Hampshire, emphasized her support from Granite Staters<\/u><\/a> when asked about a fundraising email the governor sent on her behalf last month.<\/p>\n Harris, like other potential presidential candidates, needs to build a network of friends and favors \u2014 much of which she has already developed from her own runs for Senate, the White House and her four years as vice president \u2014 while staying relevant. She retains a powerful fundraising network that can help down-ticket Democrats, too.<\/p>\n But in many parts of the country where she lost, her involvement could be a drag for Democrats otherwise facing strong political tailwinds in the midterms.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s all good,\u201d Eduardo Negr\u00f3n, a spokesperson for Harris, said in a statement. \u201cVice President Harris will continue to raise money and travel on behalf of candidates in races where she can help make a difference. With Trump so unpopular and our deep bench of strong candidates, we are now seeing deeply red states in play this cycle. The Vice President believes we should be ruthless about competing everywhere and that means giving candidates in tough races the space to do whatever it takes to win.\u201d<\/p>\n Harris\u2019 recent ramp-up marks a shift from what had been an otherwise quiet midterms strategy that has focused primarily on standing by close preexisting relationships<\/u><\/a>. It\u2019s strikingly different from other potential 2028 presidential candidates who\u2019ve endorsed more widely<\/u><\/a> and been more prominent on the campaign trail.<\/p>\n One of the few times she did weigh into a contested primary was for Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) \u2014 a co-chair of her 2024 presidential campaign \u2014 in her bid for Texas Senate. The vice president\u2019s support came in the form of a robo-call released just days before the primary <\/u><\/a>rather than an in-person appearance, and she quickly backed James Talarico shortly after he won the nomination. She also threw her support behind Michigan Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed<\/u><\/a> after a bruising primary that has left Democrats scrambling to project unity heading into the general election.<\/p>\n Red-state Democrats have been particularly pointed in their calls to keep Harris out of their races.<\/p>\n \u201cIn Kansas, you’re trying to reach 45 percent of the state who are Republicans and a lot of really good people who are Republicans, but their vantage point or their worldview may be a bit different than Kamala Harris’,\u201d Kansas Democratic Senate nominee Adam Hamilton told POLITICO. \u201cWhat I’m looking at is I’m really mounting a very Kansas-centered campaign, and I’m out speaking, I tell people I’m running as an independent-minded Democrat.\u201d<\/p>\n Hamilton is running an uphill battle in a state that hasn\u2019t sent a Democrat to the Senate since 1932<\/u><\/a>. The state is seen as potentially somewhat in play<\/u><\/a> amid the ongoing war in Iran, trade wars with close allies and a persistent cost of living crisis that have cut especially deep in agricultural territory.<\/p>\n But that doesn\u2019t mean a coastal Democrat like Harris would play well in the conservative heartland.<\/p>\n \u201cHaving somebody from California come in and try to tell Kansans who they should vote for is a pretty bad idea,\u201d Hamilton said. Harris has not endorsed in the race.<\/p>\n Other Democrats have taken similar tones toward Harris in recent days. In an interview with POLITICO<\/u><\/a>, Iowa State Auditor Rob Sand said he would not want the former vice president to appear with him as he runs for governor, adding that the country needed \u201cnew leadership.\u201d<\/p>\n State Rep. Josh Turek, speaking with reporters<\/u><\/a> after an event for his Senate campaign in Cedar Rapids, broadcasted an even more blunt answer to the same question: \u201cNo,\u201d he said flatly, letting out a laugh.<\/p>\n A similar scenario played out in Alaska last month. After Harris\u2019 team sent a fundraising email for Senate candidate and former Rep. Mary Peltola (D-Alaska) on the eve of the state\u2019s primary election, a spokesperson for Peltola\u2019s campaign told a local Alaska television station<\/u><\/a> that she \u201cisn\u2019t seeking endorsements from anyone from the Lower 48.\u201d Peltola\u2019s campaign did not respond to POLITICO\u2019s questions on the matter.<\/p>\n Campaign spokespeople for several battleground Senate Democrats locked in high-profile races, including El-Sayed in Michigan, Troy Jackson in Maine and Roy Cooper in North Carolina \u2014 who have all received her support \u2014 declined to respond to requests for comment about how involved they would like the former vice president to be in their races.<\/p>\n Harris\u2019 support isn\u2019t an albatross for all Democrats, however. For some, her endorsement is welcome \u2014 and they want her out on the trail.<\/p>\n One key battleground Democrat (and a potential 2028 rival), Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff, embraced Harris\u2019 support with open arms. \u201cSenator Ossoff is grateful for Vice President Harris’ help and support in his re-election campaign,\u201d campaign spokesperson Ellie Dougherty said in a statement, adding that he would welcome her to Georgia to campaign alongside him or on his behalf.<\/p>\n Harris lost Georgia, but the rightward swing in the state was the smallest of any battleground \u2014 in large part because of a population boom in metro Atlanta and the large share of Black voters.<\/p>\n And in deep-blue Massachusetts, former Biden White House aide Dan Koh won an open House primary on Tuesday<\/u><\/a> after running aggressively on support from Harris and President Joe Biden. Koh sought their support and featured them prominently in a campaign ad<\/u><\/a> and in social media videos. He said scheduling didn\u2019t work out for them to hit the trail, though.<\/p>\n \u201cI will never run away from two people I admire greatly, who I believe did a lot of good for this country,\u201d Koh said last week.<\/p>\n Jessica Piper contributed to this report.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Former Vice President Kamala Harris is revving up her involvement in the midterms. While some…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-129506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politico_politics","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n