Politics
Harris is telling her advisers and allies to keep her political options open
Kamala Harris has been lying low since her defeat in the presidential race, unwinding with family and senior aides in Hawaii before heading back to the nation’s capital.
But privately, the vice president has been instructing advisers and allies to keep her options open — whether for a possible 2028 presidential run, or even to run for governor in her home state of California in two years. As Harris has repeated in phone calls, “I am staying in the fight.”
She is expected to explore those and other possible paths forward with family members over the winter holiday season, according to five people in the Harris inner circle, who were granted anonymity to discuss internal dynamics. Her deliberations follow an extraordinary four months in which Harris went from President Joe Biden’s running mate to the top of the ticket, re-energizing Democrats before ultimately crashing on election night.
“She doesn’t have to decide if she wants to run for something again in the next six months,” said one former Harris campaign aide. “The natural thing to do would be to set up some type of entity that would give her the opportunity to travel and give speeches and preserve her political relationships.”
Most immediately, Harris and her advisers are working to define how and when she will speak out against Donald Trump and reassert her own role in the Democratic Party. Closing out her term as vice president, she’s set to preside over certifying the November election she lost to Trump, and then appear at the once-and-future president’s inauguration on Jan. 20.
“There will be a desire to hear her voice, and there won’t be a vacuum for long,” a person close to Harris said.
At the same time, Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, will have a long checklist to plow through before they leave the Naval Observatory for good.
They have to decide whether they’ll take up permanent residence at their home in Los Angeles, or establish a base elsewhere. No matter where Harris and her family live, some around her have expressed concerns about safety, as her Secret Service protection expires six months after stepping away.
Following her meteoric rise in Washington and California, there are internal questions about standing up a federal committee to raise money. It will be the first time in two decades that the former senator and career prosecutor will be out of public office. That means she’ll be standing up a personal office and nurturing her massive online presence without the organizing principle of day-to-day governing.
“You just got to let them marinate in their own success, their own failures or their own mistakes or their achievements. This is personal,” said Donna Brazile, a close ally of Harris’ and campaign manager for Al Gore, the last vice president who ran for president, lost, and never ran again. He instead made climate change the cause of his life.
Brazile recalled how Gore was given months before people demanded an answer about his next moves and that over the last few months Harris, despite her defeat, has earned “a lot of political capital. You don’t squander that by making snap decisions.”
While other Democrats have lost presidential races and been forced to regroup, none in the modern era inherited the nomination roughly 100 days before the election. Indeed, most of the prior losses occurred after a carefully planned, and often arduous climb to the top. Harris, 60, is comparatively young.
“There is no one — no one — who actually can relate to what she’s been through these last four months. No one,” said Paul Maslin, the Democratic pollster. “And I wouldn’t begrudge her at all to take some time and figure this out.”
But others close to Harris believe that the current news cycle and speed at which the Democratic Party might start making decisions will force Harris, who tends to deliberate for long periods, to make some early decisions.
In interviews with Harris aides and confidants, as well as Democratic luminaries, there’s broad acknowledgement that Harris represents an “X factor” in the next Democratic primary. While some Democrats are dismissive of a 2028 run — and few, if any, prospective opponents would defer to her — Harris notched more than 74 million votes and was able to build good will among a large group of Americans.
The good news for Harris, according to her allies, is that her standing in the party increased the longer that she ran her short campaign, which is rare in electoral politics. Her allies believe that the toxicity that surrounded John Kerry or Hillary Clinton after their losses is unlikely to taint Harris’ political future in the same way.
They point to her running a race as a more moderate candidate (a break from her 2019 primary run) as a boon to whatever choice she ends up making as the party seems poised to do its own writ large move to the center.
“She proved a lot of skeptics wrong as a political athlete. And her standing with the public is as good as any Democrats with the name I.D. that she has,” a Harris ally told Blue Light News.
A snap poll of the 2028 field found Harris at 41 percent, a significant lead over the others: Gavin Newsom, Josh Shapiro, Tim Walz, Pete Buttigieg, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Gretchen Whitmer, JB Pritzker, Andy Beshear and several others who all were in single digits.
But Harris’ advantages are not unique. Similar surveys taken in the two months after the 2016 campaign, for example, found Clinton with a large lead for 2020, with majorities of Democrats saying they wanted her to run in the next cycle.
“I can’t conceivably imagine the party turning to her a second time,” said one Democratic strategist granted anonymity to speak candidly.
If she opts not to run in 2028, the earliest clues about her political future could come around whether she runs to succeed Newsom in California, a prospect Blue Light News first reported in May. Her office pushed back strongly at the time. Yet the mere idea of her running again in California has frozen the field and kept some fundraisers on the sidelines.
While there’s disagreement among people who know Harris well about what office she should run for, there’s emerging consensus that she probably can’t do both — compete for governor and then turn around and start a presidential campaign a few weeks later.
The calendar alone would make that difficult, with the 2028 primary gearing up immediately after the midterm elections. Harris confidants also point to the demands on a governor’s time, and the expectation of the electorate that she would stay home and dig into the state’s mounting challenges around the high cost of living, homelessness and crime.
“It’s a real job,” is how one of the people close to her put it, contending they were at first dismissive of the idea she might do it, but now feel like it’s possible.
And if she doesn’t run for governor, Harris will have to consider the cost of staying out of an open race in a state where other high-profile offices are not likely to come up soon. Both Senate seats will be filled for the foreseeable future by relatively youthful incumbent Sens. Alex Padilla, 51, and Adam Schiff, 64.
Advisers and aides to several other candidates conceded that a gubernatorial run would almost certainly clear the field of serious challengers, leaving a mix of Democratic also-rans and unproven self-financed candidates to take her on.
The state hasn’t elected a Republican to the office since Arnold Schwarzenegger nearly 20 years ago, and Harris, who would be about 70 after two terms, could view the governorship as a capstone of her political career, or potentially pass on 2028 and still run for president in 2032, if there’s an opening.
“She is not someone who makes rash decisions. She takes, sometimes, a painfully long time to make decisions. So I would pretty much guarantee you she has no idea what her next move is,” said Brian Brokaw, a former Harris aide who has remained close to her circle.
“Could she run for governor? Yes. Do I think she wants to run for governor? Probably not. Could she win? Definitely. Would she like the job? I don’t know. Could she run for president again? Yes,” Brokaw said. “Would she have a whole bunch of skepticism from the outset, because she has run in a full-length Democratic primary where [in 2019] she didn’t even make it long enough to be in the Iowa caucus, and then she was the nominee this year?”
He added: “On the other hand, people can learn a lot from their previous adversity, too.”
Allies of Texas GOP Senate hopeful Ken Paxton are planning a $15 million ad campaign starting Tuesday, the first major ad buy on behalf of Paxton in his battleground matchup with Democrat James Talarico.
Two new ads from Lone Star Liberty PAC, the pro-Paxton super PAC, will air across 18 markets across Texas over the ensuing two weeks. They mark Paxton’s first significant foray on to the airwaves, jolting a campaign that has been clouded by concerns over Talarico’s massive cash advantage and Paxton’s electability.
One of the new ads will lean into Paxton’s record as attorney general, highlighting Texas’ recent agreement with Kellogg’s to remove certain food dyes from cereals and the state’s billion-dollar settlements with Meta and Google over privacy and safety concerns.
“When they come after Texans, he comes after them,” a voiceover says in the ad.
The other new advertisement accuses Talarico of aiding China’s growth at the expense of Texas residents, pointing to the Democrat’s vote against restrictions on Chinese investments, and argues that a Chinese billionaire’s ownership of land near Laughlin Air Force Base presents national security concerns.
“China’s got Talarico. Texas needs Ken Paxton,” the ad says.
“[James Talarico] voted to sell Texas land to China, pushed a Texas Green New Deal that would gut our oil and gas jobs, and stood with criminals over cops as the most pro-criminal member of the Texas House,” Lone Star Liberty spokesperson Sam Cooper said. “That record is too extreme for Texas. Between now and Election Day, voters are going to hear it.”
Talarico’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The multimillion-dollar campaign comes as Republicans look for ways to negate Talarico’s war chest. The latest Federal Election Commission filings from July show Talarico with $21.5 million in the bank, dwarfing Paxton’s $1.8 million in reserves.
That advantage, along with Paxton’s drawn-out primary runoff that forced him to focus on beating Sen. John Cornyn, has allowed Talarico to dominate the general election messaging battle on television. He’s spent $39 million on TV since the March primary, according to data tracking firm AdImpact.
On Saturday, Talarico launched his first negative ad against Paxton, spotlighting his impeachment and labeling him “the most corrupt politician in Texas.”
Although Republicans have traditionally been favored in Texas statewide elections, Democrats are optimistic Talarico can defeat Paxton. A Texas Public Opinion Research poll released Thursday found Talarico leading Paxton — 48 percent to 42 percent.
Concerns about a potential Paxton defeat have prompted some Republicans to implore President Donald Trump to invest some of the gargantuan MAGA Inc. war chest in the Texas race. MAGA Inc. has over $400 million in cash on hand, and Trump publicly pledged to support Paxton financially.
Republicans and Democrats are fighting over working class voters. Americans don’t believe the rhetoric.
Fifty-five percent of Americans think politicians are just trying to win votes when they say they will help the working class, according to new results from The Blue Light News Poll. It’s a view held by majorities of people who voted for President Donald Trump, who voted for Kamala Harris and who self-identify as working class.
Only one in four Americans who self-identify as working-class say politicians genuinely want to help them.
That wariness comes as both parties increasingly see working class voters as key to their winning coalitions. But The POLITICO Poll results show both parties face serious challenges to doing so.
Neither party does particularly well with Americans who identify as working class: 38 percent of them say Democrats best represent them, while 32 percent say Republicans. Americans, broadly, are almost identically split, with a 37 percent plurality saying Democrats best represent the interests of the working class, while 30 percent say Republicans.
Democrats wrestling with how to win back voters who have drifted toward the GOP — as their coalition has grown increasingly dominated by college-educated Americans — are locked in an intraparty battle over which wing of the party, progressives or moderates, best speaks to these voters.
“We’ve struggled with the working class for quite a while and it’s been a combination of being out of touch with working class values on a lot of culture issues and being seen as either not helpful or not helpful enough on economic issues,” said Jim Kessler, executive vice president for policy at the centrist Democratic think tank Third Way.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), widely considered the leader of the progressive movement, told Playbook’s Will Steakin that progressive Democrats “are speaking to the needs of working families.”
“It is not just traditional Democrats or independents,” he said. “There are a lot of working-class Republicans who understand that there’s something wrong when we are the only major nation on Earth not to guarantee health care to all people.”
Republicans, meanwhile, are trying to hold onto the gains Trump made in 2024 with working class voters — including Black and Latino voters frustrated with the Biden-era economy — at a time when cost of living remains voters’ top concern.
“With the [Iran] war, with gas prices, with cost of food, the working class is not happy with the president, and many who are independents and even some Republicans have said that he’s forgotten about them,” said former Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Renacci.
Who is working class?
Complicating both parties’ efforts to win over these voters is that Americans do not agree on what makes someone working class. Neither do lawmakers and party officials.
When asked whether the term “working class” describes them, a 59 percent majority of Americans broadly say it does, while just 31 percent say it does not, according to the survey conducted by London-based polling firm Public First. But when forced to choose from a list of labels — including wealthy, middle class, lower middle class, working class and poor — just 16 percent of adults say they identify as “working class.”
Americans are also divided over what characteristics define the working class.
Some politicians, including progressive New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Andy Schor, the centrist Democratic mayor of Lansing, Michigan, have argued the definition of working class is expansive — encompassing anyone who needs to work to pay their bills.
“If you’re not making enough money that you don’t have to work, then you’re working class,” said Schor in an interview. “The American Dream is to be able to work hard and get ahead, and people are not getting ahead like they used to, and they’ll look at the folks that they vote for and think, ‘Who can help me to get ahead?’”
The Blue Light News Poll illustrates the difficult path for the GOP to solidify its gains with working class Americans as economic concerns continue to be top of mind: More than a third of this group say they are not currently employed. A 35 percent plurality also say Trump, not former President Joe Biden, is fully responsible for the economy and many oppose the war in Iran, which most say has made things more expensive for them.
Half of self-identified working class Americans say Trump has spent too much time focusing on international affairs instead of on domestic issues.
“I think [Republican candidates] just got to tell the truth,” Renacci, the Ohio Republican, said. “You just have to start realizing that those middle class voters are struggling and they’re just looking for somebody who’s going to understand their issues and problems.”
The race for 2026
November will offer a major test of whether each party’s working class pitch is working, carrying implications that extend into 2028.
Candidates in both parties are racing to flex their working class bonafides this cycle, leaning on their biographies to signal ties to these voters. Trump pushed that playbook to extremes in 2024, when he briefly worked the fryer and drive-through window at McDonald’s as part of a campaign swing through Pennsylvania.
Republicans have continued that approach, with candidates and administration officials emphasizing their blue-collar roots on the campaign trail. Vice President JD Vance recently returned to his hometown of Middletown, Ohio, where he spoke at the steel plant where his grandfather worked.
In battleground Georgia, Rep. Mike Collins — the state’s GOP Senate nominee — often touts his background as a trucker. And GOP Sen. Susan Collins has broken with Trump on tariff policy, saying his trade fight with Canada hurts working families and small businesses in Maine, where she’s locked in a competitive battle for reelection.
These efforts come against the backdrop of increasing concerns about the economy, fueled by the ongoing Iran war.
Democrats, meanwhile, are divided over which flank of the party can best appeal to working class voters, a fissure that burst into public view during primary season, when a slate of progressives prevailed in high-profile contests.
“The working class are giving Democrats another look and we better not blow it,” said Kessler of Third Way. “Donald Trump got reelected based on the notion he was going to fight for you, working class men and women, and his first year and a half has been anything but that.”
Some Democrats have made their working class background central to their pitch: Sam Forstag, a union leader and former smokejumper, is running in an open district in western Montana that Trump won by double digits in 2024. Bob Brooks, a firefighter union chief, is challenging GOP Rep. Ryan Mackenzie in Pennsylvania.
But some progressives are still running into limits: In Michigan, one of Democrats’ must-hold seats in November, the state’s divisive Senate primary illustrated that debate in real-time. Progressive Abdul El-Sayed, who won the Democratic nomination, performed best in the state’s wealthiest and most highly educated areas, while moderate Rep. Haley Stevens did better in places with lower average incomes and where fewer votes have college degrees.
Jessie Blaeser contributed to this report.
Politics
Trump’s Arab American allies in Michigan are jumping ship. Mike Rogers could pay the price.
Four days before the 2024 election, Donald Trump declared in Dearborn, Michigan that “the Muslim population” is “liking Trump.” On Election Day, the state’s Arab Americans helped deliver Trump a victory.
Now, they want nothing to do with him — and are souring on the GOP overall.
Many Detroit-area Arab Americans, who swung hard to Trump over the war in Gaza and cost-of-living issues, are now saying they’re fed up with the ongoing war in Iran and slow peace process in Gaza. It’s a shift that could have direct consequences on the battle for Senate control, with former Michigan Rep. Mike Rogers fighting to hold onto Trump’s 2024 gains against Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, a Muslim whose parents are Egyptian immigrants.
Trump’s perceived broken promises — exacerbated by GOP attacks against El-Sayed that some see as Islamophobic and racist — are pushing these voters out of reach for Rogers.
“[Trump] promised to make America great again,” said Albert Abbas, who presented a peace prize to Trump during his 2024 Dearborn visit. “Did he do that? Did he put American interests first? It’s the complete opposite.”
A dip in support from Arab American former Trump voters could hurt Rogers’ path to election in what’s shaping up to be a tough year nationally for the GOP. And it could offset gains he makes in other communities — including with some Jewish voters who are wary of El-Sayed for his harsh criticism of Israel and comments from him and his allies that some see as antisemitic. Both communities matter significantly in close elections, and Michigan has the largest proportion of Arab Americans in the country, with nearly 400,000 living in the state, as well as more than 100,000 Jews.
Michigan Republicans — who, just two years ago, dreamed of building sustainable support among the state’s Arab American population — now see community leaders shifting ranks.
“Once the administration got into the White House, everything we were told kind of flip-flopped,” said Hassan Nehme, who served as the Michigan Republican Party’s vice chair during the 2024 cycle and helped lead outreach to the Arab American community. “We lost all traction. Republicans are kind of dead in the water in the area right now.”
Dearborn-based Imam Husham Al-Husainy backed Trump in 2024 and was slated to offer a benediction at the inauguration but was removed from the program after complaints from pro-Israel conservatives. He said he now backs El-Sayed because Trump recanted on his promise for “no new wars.”
Amer Ghalib, a former Democratic mayor of Muslim-majority Hamtramck, backed Trump in 2024, and was later nominated by Trump to serve as ambassador to Kuwait, though he didn’t get confirmed in the face of bipartisan concerns about a history of allegedly antisemitic remarks. He said Republicans “should be more concerned about losing the long-term trust of the Arab American community than about losing the gains they made in 2024.”
“There is a tremendous work that needs to be done … to address people’s concerns and regain their trust,” Ghalib said.
And Faye Nemer, who leads the Dearborn-based Middle Eastern and North African American Chamber of Commerce, said the midterms will mark a “change in sentiment” in her community toward Republicans.
“Many voters, including myself, are now asking whether the policy promises we received bear any resemblance to the reality that we’re seeing on the ground,” said Nemer.
Rogers has not shied away from branding his opponent as a Muslim extremist. He’s hammered El-Sayed for campaigning with Hasan Piker, a prominent and controversial left-wing influencer who’s drawn accusations of antisemitism, as well as slamming El-Sayed for responding to an attack on a Michigan synagogue earlier this year by condemning it but saying “hurt people hurt people” because members of the attacker’s family had been killed by the Israeli military in Lebanon.
El-Sayed has condemned antisemitism throughout his campaign; in a statement distancing himself from Piker last week, he said “Antisemitism is a scourge, and we need to address it in all its forms”) On Saturday he apologized for his remarks after the synagogue attack,telling a group of Jewish Democrats that he’d “made a mistake” and that “nobody deserves to have their pain trampled on.”
Rogers’ allies have also circulated reports from conservative outlets that seek to link El-Sayed’s father-in-law to the Muslim Brotherhood.
“El-Sayed wants to represent Palestine,” Rogers said at the Michigan GOP convention last week. “I want to represent Michigan.”
Trump has weighed in, too: The week El-Sayed won the Democratic primary, the president told reporters in the Oval Office that the country is seeing “jihadists being elected all over the place.”
The National Republican Senatorial Committee’s first ad of the general election called the Democratic nominee by his full name, Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed.
The NRSC ad will “alienate and distance” potential Arab American supporters, said Nemer.
“I most certainly will not support a candidate that is alienating and vilifying my community,” said Nemer, who met Trump during his 2024 visit to Dearborn. “I was fully prepared to support Mr. Rogers. … But after seeing the direction that he chose to proceed in, that’s given me a lot of pause.”
Nehme, the former state GOP vice chair, said many Arab Americans are drawn to El-Sayed because of his background, even though many are far more socially conservative than the Democratic nominee. “They’re not even really looking at politics anymore,” Nehme said.
During Rogers’ unsuccessful 2024 Senate bid, he acknowledged that his outspoken support for Israel caused some consternation for Muslim voters. That cycle, Trump won Dearborn, a Detroit suburb that is the only Arab-majority city in the U.S., by six points; Rogers ran behind him, losing in the city by two points. It was a significant improvement over 2020, when President Joe Biden and Democratic Sen. Gary Peters each won the city by around 40 points.
Monica Yatooma, who helped the Trump campaign’s outreach to Muslim and Arab American voters in 2024 before launching a failed bid for secretary of state this cycle, said she doubts Republicans can match Trump’s gains in Arab-majority areas in the current environment.
“The only reason [Arab Americans] voted for Trump is because they were voting against [Vice President] Kamala [Harris],” she said. “They weren’t voting for Trump, so they’re not really conservative voters, and there’s no value there for them with Mike Rogers that aligns with their values.”
It is unclear what, if anything, Rogers is doing to reach out to the community. Yatooma and Nehme, both Republicans, said they have seen little outreach from Rogers’ campaign.
“I’m hoping that they pull through and they come out and at least try to address the community,” Nehme said. “But in all actuality, I’m not sure how much good it’s going to do.”
Rogers’ campaign, when asked several questions about his outreach to the Arab American community, said “the Chaldean community has been a strong ally,” referring to a Christian ethnic group with Iraqi heritage whose largest community outside the Middle East resides in the Detroit area. Yatooma, who is Chaldean, said her ethnic community has historically voted for Republicans.
“Mike Rogers welcomes all Michiganders, regardless of faith, socioeconomic status, or background, to our campaign to Get Michigan Working Again,” said Alyssa Brouillet, spokesperson for the Rogers campaign, in a statement. “The same can’t be said about Abdul El-Sayed, who continues to fan the flames of antisemitism, sympathizes with the terrorist attacker who tried to mass murder 140 kids in a Michigan synagogue, and refuses to disavow Hasan Piker, who calls Jews ‘inbred.’”El-Sayed campaign spokesperson Cole Wozniak called attacks invoking El-Sayed’s faith and identity “cheap.”
“Mike Rogers is resorting to cheap attacks to distract from his deep record as a corrupt career politician who has taken millions from Big Pharma,” Wozniak said in a statement. “Michiganders see right through it, and they’re not going to let Mike Rogers distract from the fact he’s spent thirty years in Washington making himself and his billionaire donors richer while selling out working families.”
Without hearing directly from the Rogers campaign or state party leaders, Arab American voters say their community is likely to swing back to the left this election.
Could Rogers “go into Dearborn and have those conversations and fix that?” asked Yatooma. “I think yeah, absolutely. I just don’t know if he’s doing it.”
-
Uncategorized2 years ago
Bob Good to step down as Freedom Caucus chair this week
-
Politics2 years agoFormer Kentucky AG Daniel Cameron launches Senate bid
-
The Dictatorship2 years agoLuigi Mangione acknowledges public support in first official statement since arrest
-
The Josh Fourrier Show2 years agoDOOMSDAY: Trump won, now what?
-
Politics2 years agoFormer ‘Squad’ members launching ‘Bowman and Bush’ YouTube show
-
Politics2 years agoBlue Light News’s Editorial Director Ryan Hutchins speaks at Blue Light News’s 2025 Governors Summit
-
The Dictatorship2 years agoPete Hegseth’s tenure at the Pentagon goes from bad to worse
-
The Dictatorship12 months agoMike Johnson sums up the GOP’s arrogant position on military occupation with two words