How Harris built her political network as vice president

Before she became the Democratic nominee for president, there was a view of Vice President Kamala Harris among party elites and Washington insiders that she might not have what it takes to mobilize voters.

Her approval ratings were low. She'd been criticized not just by Republicans, but also by fellow Democrats, for miscues in her early days in the No. 2 job in government. She couldn't keep staff.

But while the Beltway set cemented its take on her, Harris built a formidable political network across the country and online. Her direct engagement with tens of thousands of political activists and voters — particularly through a tour of college campuses, events promoting reproductive rights and pushing an economic-empowerment agenda tilted toward the Black community — positioned Harris to energize her party when she was tapped to top the ticket.

In other words, there was a ready core of Harris supporters ready to jump into action.

"She's been putting in the work, not just over the last few weeks, but the last few months, the last few years," said Rep. Steven Horsford, D-Nev., who recalls Harris meeting with culinary union workers — the most powerful labor group in his state — for back-of-the-hall tours, roundtables and a major address in January. "Those same workers are now showing up for her, you know, launching one of the largest ground campaigns I've seen. ... That's going to pay great dividends."

If Harris manages to win Nevada for Democrats for a fifth straight election — despite most polls showing former President Donald Trump with a small lead — the 60,000-member culinary workers union’s turnout effort will be at the heart of the victory.

Her official schedule and campaign activities, which took her repeatedly to key swing states earlier this year, convened segments of the electorate that will be crucial to Democrats' chances of holding onto the White House.

In March, Harris became the first sitting vice president to visit an abortion clinic when she traveled to Minnesota — a state Trump has long eyed as one he could capture despite decades of Democratic dominance — and promoted reproductive rights with Gov. Tim Walz, who is now her running mate.

The Supreme Court's 2022 Dobbs decision overturning abortion rights angered Harris, but it played into a political strength for her. More than anyone, the first woman to serve as vice president became the face of the White House response to the decision — and the state abortion bans that went into effect following it.

"A year after Dobbs, it is clear where this is headed: Extremist Republicans in Congress have proposed to ban abortion nationwide," Harris said during a speech in Charlotte, North Carolina — another swing state — in June 2023. "But I have news for them: We're not having that."

Mini Timmaraju, president of the group Reproductive Freedom for All and a former Biden administration official, said Harris has deep and long-lasting relationships among abortion-rights activists that date back to her years in the Senate and in California.

As a senator, she grilled Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and accumulated clips that helped her build a stronger national audience among abortion-rights advocates. Kavanaugh would win confirmation, but Harris won new fans. She traveled to Arizona to talk about reproductive rights the week the state's 19th-century abortion ban was ruled enforceable in April, and she spoke in Florida when new restrictions were imposed there in May. Both states have been competitive in recent presidential elections, with Arizona voting once for Trump and once for Biden and Florida favoring Trump twice by less than 4 percentage points.

"All of it adds up and matters," Timmaraju said.

As of Aug. 14, according to a list provided by the Harris campaign, she had been to each of seven battleground states — Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina, Georgia, Nevada and Arizona — between four and seven times in 2024 alone.

At Harris’ first rally as Democrats’ presumptive nominee in Atlanta on July 30, she was introduced by Tyler Greene, a Morehouse College alumnus who had participated in a May 2023 roundtable discussion on young men of color and small business in Washington. In addition to events like that, the vice president's campus tour put her in front of an estimated 15,000 students at institutions that primarily serve students of color, community colleges and vocational schools, and state universities.

"The best thing that happened to Kamala Harris was to leave the Naval Observatory (where the vice president lives), leave the Capitol and go out beyond Washington, D.C.," said Bakari Sellers, a former South Carolina state representative and prominent Harris backer.

When Biden was vice president, it made sense for him to spend time on Capitol Hill and negotiate deals in the Senate, where he served for 36 years. But for Harris, who was a senator for just four years before being elected vice president, there was a better use of her skills in advancing the administration's agenda, Sellers said.

"Kamala Harris' job is different because she is one of our more effective messengers," Sellers continued. "And when reproductive rights or college tours or Black economic mobility are the issues du jour, having her on the road was much more valuable than giving her a policy that she has to negotiate with [centrist Sens.] Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin."

If she's elected president, Harris will need to work with her former colleagues in the Senate. But for now, and for the next two-plus months, the experience she's gained traveling the country — and the relationships she's formed with civically engaged voters — appear to be serving her well.