Will she or won’t she? Harris in ’28?

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OPINION – Let me preface this essay by saying that I don’t have the slightest idea whether Kamala Harris is going to run for president again in 2028. She has said publicly that she’s “thinking about it.” And Gov. Gavin Newsom jolted the political world recently by saying he would defer to her if she did.

What I do know for sure is that she shouldn’t run, if she doesn’t want to embarrass herself. To understand the situation, we need only look at her home state of California.

I kind of cringe to quote Jesus in an opinion piece about politics, but he did say, “A prophet is not without honor, save in his own country.” In more colloquial terms, this is sort of the equivalent of “familiarity breeds contempt.” And despite her service as a U.S senator and attorney general of the largest state, voters there — including Democratic voters — were never behind her first run for president.

Her effort to win the Democratic nomination in the 2020 cycle started out with a bang, a huge rally in Oakland. It all went downhill after that, even in California. A CNN headline on October 2, 2019, said it all: “Kamala Harris’ poll numbers tumble in her home state of California.”

Even at that early point, as a sitting senator, surveys showed she was running fourth in California among the primary candidates, behind Elizabeth Warren (23 percent), Joe Biden (22 percent), and Bernie Sanders (21 percent), with a measly 8 percent support. In the same poll in July, she was at 19 percent, so the direction of support in her home state was only downward once she started campaigning. After struggling to raise money, and enduring public staff infighting, Harris hightailed it out of the race in December of ‘19, before a single vote had been cast.

Of course, she was then later Biden’s pick as his running mate in that cycle, and the ticket predictably carried dark blue California over Donald Trump by a 63-34 percent margin.

But another warning sign for Harris came when she ran as the Democratic nominee for president in 2024. She did win California over Trump, of course, but with less of a margin than Delawarean Biden had won four years before, 59-38. In fact — are you listening? — she recorded the lowest showing for a Democratic nominee in the state since 2004, the first time since that cycle that the nominee failed to win 60 percent of the vote.

Moving ahead to 2028, is there clamor among her fellow Golden Staters to have her take another shot? Um, hardly. In fact, quite the opposite. A University of California at Berkeley poll in March of this year showed that by a margin of 25-63, California voters said she should not run. Among Democrats, it was nearly as dire, 33-51. In a listing of potential Democratic possibilities in ‘28, Gov. Gavin Newsom came in as first choice at 28 percent; Harris lagged in fourth place, behind even non-Californians Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and Pete Buttigieg at only 9 percent. Harris wasn’t even the second choice of more than 11 percent.

What does all this mean for a potential Harris redux? Quite simply, how does a presidential candidate barnstorm around other states seeking the support of Democratic voters in South Carolina, Nevada and New Hampshire, etc., when Democratic voters in their own state don’t support their candidacy?

So, take your best shot, Kamala Harris. But probably best to remember that biblical thing about prophets in their own country.

Garry South is a veteran California-based strategist who has played prominent roles in three presidential campaigns.