Opinion: Is a California governor’s race in Kamala Harris’ future?

In recent weeks, President Joe Biden has ceded the spotlight to President-elect Donald Trump. But Biden has been a vivid public presence compared with Vice President Kamala Harris.

Since losing to Trump, Harris has appeared only sporadically in public, accompanying Biden to Arlington Cemetery on Veterans Day, swearing in three new senators, attending White House events and holiday parties.

Next month, Harris will become the third defeated presidential candidate in 64 years to preside over the joint congressional session certifying their defeat, like Republican Richard Nixon in 1961 and Democrat Al Gore in 2001. (A fourth, Democrat Hubert Humphrey, stayed away in 1969.)

Two weeks later, she will become a private citizen for the first time since becoming San Francisco’s district attorney 24 years ago, soon to confront the decision facing every defeated candidate: Should I try again?

Nixon, of course, won the presidency eight years after his 1960 defeat to John F. Kennedy. But the track record for losing presidential nominees is not good. Since the 1890s, only Nixon and Trump have won the White House after losing a prior election.

Besides those two, only Democrats Adlai Stevenson and William Jennings Bryan and Republican Thomas Dewey were even renominated after they lost the presidency. All lost again, Bryan two more times.

Back to California?

The more immediate political decision facing Harris is whether to seek California’s governorship in 2026, when term-limited Democrat Gavin Newsom will have to step down.

Already, several top Democrats have announced their candidacies, including Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, who has been a close friend and ally of Harris, and two other statewide officeholders. Others are mulling races.

But a poll taken right before Harris lost the presidency showed she would have strong support if she sought the post, especially among her fellow Democrats. The poll, taken by University of California’s Institute of Governmental Studies, showed nearly half of the likely voters sampled said they were very or somewhat likely to support her, but three in four Democrats said they were.

Ironically, seeking California’s governorship was how Nixon decided to revive his presidential possibilities after he narrowly lost the 1960 election. He lost in 1962 to Democratic Gov. Pat Brown, and angrily declared he was holding his last press conference. But he restored his national standing by helping the GOP rebound nationally after its 1964 defeat and, four years later, won the White House.

When Nixon ran in 1968, he was helped by having strong party support at a time that mattered far more than it does today and by the decisions of two potentially strong rivals, Govs. Nelson Rockefeller of New York and Ronald Reagan of California, to stay out of the race until the very end. And his main early foe, Michigan Gov. George Romney, damaged his own candidacy with an ill-considered statement about a visit to Vietnam.

Run for president?

For Harris, however, running for governor seems more like an alternate option for future public service than a path to winning the presidency. If elected, it would be hard for her to run for president just two years later and, by 2032, Democrats would almost certainly want someone younger. And if she lost a governors’ race, it would underscore concerns about her electability.

In the recent campaign, Harris ran a spirited race under difficult odds following Biden’s forced withdrawal. But her defeat, just eight years after Hillary Clinton lost to Trump, renewed concerns that the country is not yet ready to elect a female president

Besides, Democrats have not looked kindly in recent years on defeated presidential nominees seeking second chances. Both Gore and Clinton were widely blamed for their defeats in 2000 and 2016, respectively.

And unlike 2024, when she inherited the nomination more or less by default, Harris would confront a crowded landscape if she decided to run in 2028. The Democratic field is likely to include several prominent younger Democrats, such as Govs. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, J.B. Pritzker of Illinois and Wes Moore of Maryland, and Reps. Ro Khanna of California and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.

At least one of them seems likely to benefit from the party’s desire for a fresh face after the two-decade Obama-Biden-Harris era.

When Harris conceded the 2024 election to Trump, she made a general vow to remain active politically, declaring: “While I concede this election, I do not concede the fight that fueled this campaign — the fight: the fight for freedom, for opportunity, for fairness, and the dignity of all people.

“That is a fight I will never give up,” she said.

According to Politico, she has been giving friends and allies a similar message in private conversations, urging them to keep their options open and declaring, “I am staying in the fight.”

But just how and when she plans to do that remains unclear. And it is impossible for anyone outside her inner circle to know what the long-term impact of losing will be on her.

When former Vice President Walter Mondale lost the presidency in 1984, he later told Politico, he asked defeated 1972 nominee George McGovern how long it took him to get over his defeat.

“I’ll let you know when it happens,” McGovern told him.

Carl P. Leubsdorf is the former Washington bureau chief of the Dallas Morning News. ©2024 The Dallas Morning News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency.