We've been hearing for months how former Vice President Kamala Harris is looking to run for governor of California in 2026. POLITICO got in on the scoop weeks ago, around the time that Harris attended an Oscars watch party. Now, The New York Times is reporting about such plans, though there's even more to it this time.
"Sidelined and Still Processing Her Defeat, Harris Looks for a Way Back In," the report is titled. It's been close to six months since Harris lost handily to now President Donald Trump. Not only did she lose the Electoral College, and all seven swing states, but she became the first Democrat to lose the popular vote since 2004. She was a bad candidate who was installed as the nominee and has never won a single primary vote. What is there to still process?
There's a key paragraph to the report, though, just before detailing what Harris' potential plans might be. It's still someone else's fault:
Friends, former aides and advisers say Ms. Harris, 60, still thinks she would have beaten Mr. Trump if she’d had more than 107 days to campaign — the implication being that former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. should have quit the race earlier.
Yet some of her closest allies say she is leaning against another White House run in 2028 and, instead, toward a campaign for governor of California in 2026. Her political choice is binary, she has told people: She can run for governor or president, but not both.
Ms. Harris, who jokes to friends that she is unemployed for the first time, has explored options beyond pursuing electoral office, too. She hired the Creative Artists Agency to gauge interest in speaking engagements and a potential book. An aide has held preliminary talks with universities about establishing a policy institute, though some warned that could complicate her political aspirations.
But she has spurned early opportunities to get back in the game. While other prominent Democrats — including Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, her former running mate — have asserted themselves in the party’s struggle to chart a path to a comeback, with town-hall events, podcasts, speeches and television appearances, Ms. Harris has given no interviews and has largely avoided the spotlight.
We've heard the narrative before that then President Joe Biden should have dropped out of the race sooner, but his family wanted to keep him in for as long as they did. Then there's how Biden endorsed Harris too quickly, according to Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). One of those recently released books on the 2024 election claimed that Harris had to beg Biden for that endorsement.
When it comes to these potential plans, that she would run for governor or president again is nothing shocking. There's still more lamenting in the piece, as it also gets further into those details:
Interviews with more than three dozen of Ms. Harris’s advisers, former aides, allies and friends reveal a politician — known, as much as anything, for her caution — standing at perhaps her most fateful crossroads yet.
After 22 years as an elected official, she must decide whether, or how, to continue her political career in an environment that was remade by her defeat.
Looking ahead, while still processing
Leaving last year behind has not been easy.
Ms. Harris has told friends and allies that she is still processing the November result, in which she lost every swing state and saw record numbers of Black and Latino voters, historically among the most reliable Democrats, reject her.
The garage of her home in Los Angeles is stacked with boxes and bins still to be unpacked, some of them untouched since she first ran for president in 2019.
But there is work to be done, and a deadline ahead: Former vice presidents receive only six months of federal funding for an office, which means Ms. Harris will need a new revenue source by the end of July to keep her small team of aides employed.
She and her husband are weighing each new opportunity with the potential political blowback in mind.
One possibility: establishing an institute for policy and ideas. Brian Nelson, an adviser to Ms. Harris since she was California’s attorney general, has broached the idea with several universities, including Howard and Stanford. But some allies have noted that raising money for such a center could, depending on the donors, create liabilities in future races. For the same reason, Ms. Harris has been choosy about paid speaking engagements, one of which is drawing her all the way to Australia later this month.
Harris wasn't just a bad candidate who focused on insulting not just her opponent but his supporters up until her closing message speech, but also one who wasn't exactly articulate. She was routinely mocked for her word salad responses, even to relatively softball questions being asked to go into detail about her proposed policies. CBS News' "60 Minutes" even edited her responses. The network is in the middle of a lawsuit from Trump.
Establishing a policy institute has thus earned routine mockery, as evidenced by a write-up from Bonchie at our sister site of RedState and posts circulating over X.
NYT: Kamala Harris, known for her deep knowledge and ability to articulate complex issues, is thinking about launching "an institute for policy and ideas." pic.twitter.com/WzpFDetWOW
— Andrew Stiles (@AndrewStilesUSA) April 11, 2025
Even while Harris may dominate the polls, at least among Democratic voters, the piece speaks to how there's still a sense of hesitancy perhaps from the party. Weeks after she lost, right before Thanksgiving, Harris released a messaged to her supporters. She sounded intoxicated, and yet the DNC's own account shared the clip, leading to speculation about what they hoped for her political future.
There's also the sense of Democrats in disarray:
But as Democrats practically beg their elected officials to muster more forceful opposition to Mr. Trump, Ms. Harris herself has been nearly nowhere.
In a rare move, she spoke by Zoom on the eve of the April 1 Wisconsin Supreme Court election to about 100 Democratic workers and organizers in the state, praising their efforts on her campaign and ahead of the judicial contest.
“I know you all will never give up, and that we’re going to continue to wage this fight — in the voting booth and in the courts and in the public square,” Ms. Harris said, according to a participant on the call.
Tellingly, however, Ms. Harris’s offer to visit Wisconsin was rejected as a potential distraction during early voting, according to people briefed on the discussions. And even the Zoom call was kept private until after the polls closed, at the request of Wisconsin Democrats, who feared that reports of her involvement would divert attention from Elon Musk, the overriding target of the Democratic campaign.
Harris was indeed one of the Democrats backing Susan Crawford, the liberal who earlier this month won the state Supreme Court race in Wisconsin. That video message the former vice president record didn't come out until after, though, and she came off as sounding rather odd.
That being said, the article still frames it as Harris biding her time:
Staying on the sidelines has allowed Ms. Harris plenty of time to consider her next move, however.
The next presidential race could kick into high gear just after the 2026 midterms, if not sooner. Already, some aspirants have begun plotting campaigns.
Some Harris aides believe she would automatically be the front-runner in a crowded primary field, thanks to her name recognition and wide network of donors and supporters.
Let Harris run with that level of hubris. She might even actually win a primary vote this time, something she failed to do for either her 2020 or 2024 presidential campaigns.
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