Vice President Harris is campaigning in battleground Wisconsin today as her campaign enters its third day. The gathering in Milwaukee today will be the first major public event of her campaign.
The count of delegates promising to vote for her, showing she has enough for the nomination, is based on a survey by Associated Press which included interviews of delegates. In many cases entire state delegations told AP that they were, as a group, backing the vice president.
Now that Harris has essentially locked down the nomination she turns her attention to picking a running mate and completing the task of turning what had been a big Biden campaign effort into an operation dedicated to her election instead.
The Biden operation is now called Harris for President.
Fundraising is going well with her campaign having already added at least $84 million to the $93 million already in the war chest when she began her campaign only a few days ago.
Some 28,000 volunteers signed up in the first two days, a rate that is 100 times more per day than had been signing on to the Biden campaign, according to the AP.
The list of potential rivals shrinks
The list of her potential rivals for the nomination continues to shrink with Governors Wes Moore of Maryland, Gretchen Witmer of Michigan, L.B. Pritzker of Illinois, and Andy Beshear of Kentucky all announcing support for Harris. House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi also announced her support.
Harris, if elected, would be the first woman and first person of South Asian descent to be president.
The Democratic National Convention is scheduled to be held Aug. 19-22 in Chicago, but the party had announced before Biden dropped out that it would hold a virtual roll call to formally nominate Biden before in-person proceedings begin. This is in order to meet state deadlines beyond which candidates could not get onto state ballots. The convention’s rules committee is scheduled to meet this week to finalize its nomination process with a virtual vote as soon as Aug. 1, the party announced on Monday, with the process completed by August 7.
Meanwhile, the coveted labor endorsements continued to pile up with the AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest labor federation representing more than 10 million workers, adding its full-throated endorsement of the Harris campaign.
The federation’s Executive Council unanimously endorsed Harris yesterday.
The move frees up the labor federation’s people power—its big weapon—and voluntary contributions from union members for Harris’s campaign. Four years ago, unionists made millions of phone calls and even did some door-knocking for the Biden-Harris ticket which was curtailed, however, due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Labor’s foot soldiers have been shown to counteract even the corporate class’s campaign cash. OpenSecrets.org, which tracks money in politics, calculates businesses outspent labor by 16-to-1 in past presidential campaigns which labor then went on to win anyway.
The Harris endorsement lines up organized labor with other pro-Democratic organizations and the overwhelming majority of congressional Democrats. Prior endorsements rolled in from the Teachers, the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union and others, including the Service Employees, who are a non-AFL-CIO union but work closely with the federation on politics.
“From Day One, Vice President Kamala Harris has been a true partner in leading the most pro-labor administration in history,” said AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler. “She’s proven herself a principled and tenacious fighter for working people and a visionary leader we can count on.
The AFL-CIO particularly singled out Harris for championing organizing and chairing Biden’s White House Task Force on Worker Organizing and Empowerment which marshalled the federal government’s clout in favor of “new organizing and training to create pathways to good union jobs.”
Stood with striking workers
And Harris, a Californian, “stood with striking writers” against the Hollywood studios, streaming firms and TV moguls during their successful struggle, particularly against the threat of studios using artificial intelligence to reduce workers’ jobs and incomes.
As a senator, Harris also walked picket lines with the Auto Workers. She supported the Protect the Right To Organize Act, labor’s top legislative priority. The PRO Act would help level the playing field against corporate chieftains and their union-busters in organizing drives and bargaining.
As California Attorney General, Harris tackled corporate greed, the AFL-CIO said. She battled big banks who used the financier-caused recession to foreclose on homeowners—including those who wanted to keep paying off their mortgages but just needed renegotiation of timelines.
Many local unions back Harris even when having disagreed with specific Biden-Harris policies, notably Biden’s military aid for extreme right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war on Gaza.
Leading those endorsements was the 50,000-member UFCW Local 3000 in Washington state, one of the first unions to demand a ceasefire and negotiations in the war. It later urged Washington residents to vote for uncommitted delegates to the convention in a protest against the Biden-Harris stand.
But when Biden dropped out, the local’s board endorsed Harris the same day, because, the union said, “of all the threats of a second term of Trump to workers’ rights, peace, women’s rights, civil rights, and the rule of law, worker and voter democracy are crucial and we know that Donald Trump aims at undermine both.”
Numerous unions issued their strong pro-Harris statements. Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers declared, “Vice President Harris has fought alongside Joe Biden to deliver historic accomplishments and create a better life for all Americans. She has a record of fighting for us—fighting to lower the costs we pay, for reproductive rights, for worker empowerment, and to keep communities safe from gun violence. As President Biden said in his endorsement of Kamala Harris, she has his full support to be the Democratic nominee for president. And she has the AFT executive council’s support, too.”
SEIU President April Verrett’s pro-Harris declared, “The most important thing for working people right now is uniting behind Vice President Harris, the candidate who can beat Donald Trump and finish the job we started under the Biden-Harris administration. Working people are clear: Vice President Harris is the leader who has their back. SEIU is all in for Kamala Harris.
“We cannot risk a MAGA future in which corporations and the wealthy are lavishly rewarded with tax breaks and fewer regulations while working people struggle. We cannot risk more MAGA justices on the Supreme Court, who would take away more of our rights. We certainly cannot risk a president who seeks to be a dictator from Day One and whose racist, sexist, and anti-worker agenda is clearly outlined in Project 2025. That’s why working-class voters of every race will gladly back Kamala Harris, a proven leader, as our first woman president.
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