REALITY FOR KAMALA HARRIS: IT WOULD NOT BE EASY PICKINGS

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS 

FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, AUGUST 1, 2025, OR THEREAFTER

 

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

“REALITY FOR KAMALA HARRIS: IT WOULD NOT BE EASY PICKINGS”

 

Here’s the new reality for former Vice President Kamala Harris as she’s halfway though a summer of contemplating whether or not to campaign to become California’s next governor:

 

It would not be easy.

 

The entire idea of Harris running for governor, a run in which she would have to commit to serving out a full term, thus giving up on running for president in 2028, is predicated on her having an easy time of it. The presumption is that today’s crowded field of Democrats would thin out quickly to give her a virtually free “top two” primary election finish next June. This would assure her a slot on the fall ballot, most likely against either a Republican-turned-Democrat like developer Rick Caruso – who lost a run for mayor of Los Angeles three years ago – or far-right Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco.

 

But that scenario might not come about. As Harris contemplates, none of her prospective Democratic primary rivals has dropped out quickly.

 

Yes, Harris can take comfort she is the early-book leader in this race. Against a host of other declared and rumored candidates, she enjoyed 24 percent support in a poll by the UC Irvine School of Social Ecology. But placed in a hypothetical race against an unnamed Republican (right now, Caruso and Bianco are the most likely to be there), she led by only 41-29 percent, with heaps of undecided voters.

 

Undecided voters have long been poison to Harris. Their late decisions made her 2010 run for state attorney general against then-Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley a horserace lasting until the very last days of vote-counting, almost a month after Election Day. They made what looked like an easy 2016 Senate run against then-Orange County Democratic Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez tighter than most observers thought it would turn out.

 

And last-minute choices of the previously undecided in a few states cost her the presidency against Republican Donald Trump last fall.

 

So a contemplative Harris should be able to recognize a very tight race in the making and realize she just might lose – and forfeit any hope of ever becoming president.

 

She might even have trouble securing what figures to become the lone Democratic slot in the 2026 November runoff.

 

Yes, she leads the second-place Democrat, former Orange County Congresswoman Katie Porter, by a 4-1 margin in the early polling and has even larger edges over other Democrats like former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, ex-federal Health Secretary Xavier Becerra, current  Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, state Schools Supt. Tony Thurmond and ex-state Senate President Toni Adkins.

 

Some of them are bound to drop out of the top-of-ticket race before it gets extremely serious in late fall. But others will stick with it and – like Kounalakis, Porter and Villaraigosa – likely raise enough money to compete heavily against Harris.

 

History, of course, shows that when she faces stiff competition, Harris can have problems, as when she dropped out of the Democratic presidential race in 2020 even before the first primary.

 

So even though Dean Jon Gould of UC Irvine’s Social Ecology program told a reporter that “The path to governor seems well-paved for Vice President Harris if she decides to run,” it ain’t necessarily so.

 

Other observers will get different readings from the information the Irvine survey developed, which is not so far off what a slightly earlier Emerson College poll showed.

 

Caruso, for one, will see these findings as extremely encouraging. Should he win a top two slot, he will e would likely see Harris as at least as soft a target as Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, still weakened by the fact she left town when wildfire warnings were being issued before last winter’s Los Angeles area firestorms.

 

In debates, where Harris has never done very well, he would try to turn Harris into a pseudo-Bass, suggesting she might be a Bass clone.

 

This still makes a Harris entry to this race likely because of her standing as the early leader in every poll. But she’s never demonstrated an abiding interest in top California issues like homelessness or insurance company rates and performance.

 

All of which makes a Harris entry into this key race very much a question mark for the moment.

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    Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough, The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net