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, reenergizing 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.
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