WASHINGTON—Kamala Harris completed her takeover of the Democratic Party within 48 hours. And there was little standing in her way.
Fearful of chaos and losing to former President Donald Trump, Democrats quickly fell in line behind the vice president following President Biden’s Sunday afternoon letter declaring he would not stand for re-election. Potential challengers to Harris backed her, and party leaders who could have stood in her way chose not to.
Harris was well-positioned as Biden’s No. 2—she received the president’s endorsement within 30 minutes of his announcement. The vice president quickly built on that advantage, burning up the phone lines with calls to party leaders and activists from her home at the Naval Observatory. Behind the scenes, lawmakers and activist groups coalesced around her.
“I understand people are skeptical these days, but this was truly organic,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D., Conn.). “I mean, we learned about it when everybody else did. I didn’t check in with anybody else before I endorsed her about 60 minutes later.”
“She has a lot of people who have been rooting for her. There obviously was a sense that it would be better for the party to pick someone early rather than late,” Murphy said.
By Monday, an array of Democratic future stars who had been rumored as potential 2024 candidates in the event of a Biden withdrawal—her home state Gov. Gavin Newsom, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Maryland Gov. Wes Moore—had all offered endorsements. Supporters were lining up slates of convention delegates to shift from Biden over to Harris. And Harris arranged a visit to Biden’s Delaware campaign headquarters, previewing a stump speech designed to use her background as a prosecutor to directly challenge Trump and rile up the party’s base.
Harris’s rapid ascent had parallels to Biden’s own rise-from-the-ashes moment four years ago when Democrats quickly got behind him before the Super Tuesday primaries amid worries that they would lose to Trump again. But this switch has been much more dramatic.
Biden became the first president to decline to run for re-election since Lyndon Johnson in 1968—and Harris has now emerged as the expected Democratic nominee without having gone through the gauntlet of the presidential primary calendar. Her ascension came only weeks before the party’s Chicago convention and as the Democratic National Committee was sorting through plans to hold a virtual nomination in early August.
“We voted for Joe Biden’s ticket. We knew what we were getting with it. So she’s the only person who can credibly say: I do have the support of the people,” said Maya Rupert, a Democratic strategist and veteran of presidential campaigns.
Rep. Morgan McGarvey (D., Ky.) said he knew the party would unify behind Harris after months of voters at the grocery store, soccer games and church wanting to discuss with him whether Biden would step aside and what would happen next.
“The conversation always led to: ‘It’s going to be Harris,’” he said. “I think some people in politics played a little bit of fantasy baseball with it. ‘Well you know what if it’s this, what if it’s this’…but it always landed on Harris.”
In many ways, Harris was helped by her proximity to the president and a race against time. When Biden flubbed the June 27 debate, Harris quickly came to his defense, appearing on cable TV and at an event in Las Vegas to defend him—earning her praise inside the White House as a loyal soldier.
She was careful not to show any daylight with Biden as he insisted that he would be the Democratic nominee, telling audiences at events that Biden was a fighter. “He is the first to say, ‘When you get knocked down, you get back up,’” she said in Greensboro, N.C.
And there was little appetite for a drawn-out process on the convention floor. Potential 2028 Democratic contenders saw scant upside in challenging someone who was endorsed by Biden and had quickly amassed support.
Even before Biden’s announcement, Harris loyalists wanted to show her grip on the party. Michael Kapp, a DNC member from California, grew alarmed when he saw Biden’s performance during a star-studded fundraiser in Los Angeles alongside former President Barack Obama and late night host Jimmy Kimmel.
So Kapp drafted a letter expressing gratitude for Biden’s service and offering an enthusiastic endorsement for Harris. He shared it with a few trusted DNC members but hadn’t planned to release it if Biden had remained on the ticket, he said.
But once the president made his announcement, Kapp and his allies were activated, accumulating dozens of signatures of current and former DNC members for the letter. It was distributed among political and media circles to showcase Harris’s strength.
“We wanted to be prepared because we knew that in order to take the fight to Donald Trump and Republicans we needed to move quickly,” Kapp said.
Harris was also moving quickly. Wearing a hooded sweatshirt from Howard University, her alma mater, she spent Sunday making more than 100 phone calls over the course of 10 hours, telling members of Congress, governors, labor leaders, civil rights leaders and others that she was grateful for Biden’s endorsement and that she would work hard to earn the nomination in her own right.
Some party leaders didn’t back Harris right away: House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, both of New York, initially held back, as did former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) and former President Barack Obama, who wanted to help unite the party once the nominee was decided. (The other leaders have all since endorsed Harris, but Obama hasn’t yet.)
But rank-and-file members quickly came on board, as did Democrats viewed as potential presidential timber. Newsom, who got his start in San Francisco politics along with Harris two decades ago, praised Harris’s tenacity.
State party delegations, now free to support someone else at the convention, quickly backed Harris, with many holding calls Sunday and Monday to move forward. By Monday evening, the vice president had enough pledged delegates to secure the nomination.
“They were on the phone calling every single delegate,” said Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D., Conn.). “Now, keep in mind, the delegates were for Biden-Harris. She’s not a new commodity. They know her.…So they ran the phone calls and people got on the phone to commit.”
Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D., Texas) said she was taken aback by how quickly the party unified behind Harris. “There are some people that I know who were not on her side and all of a sudden they love her—so yeah, I was surprised, but it was the right thing,” she said.
Harris has also shown signs of galvanizing Democrats on a grassroots level, including Black voters and activists. A Sunday night video call with Black women leaders had more than 40,000 women join and raised more than $1.5 million for the Harris campaign. A separate call on Monday night with Black men, organized by Bakari Sellers, a political commentator and former state representative from South Carolina, had nearly 54,000 attendees and raked in nearly $1.4 million for Harris.
“It feels like Black America felt when Barack Obama ran the first time,” said Melanie Campbell, chair of Power of the Ballot Action Fund, who spoke on the Sunday call and helped organize a letter of support for Biden and Harris among Black women.
The campaign has felt the surge in interest, reporting 58,000 volunteers signing up for shifts by the end of Monday. In Pennsylvania and Nevada, the campaign said volunteers showed up at field offices Monday wanting to help.
“This is going to be tough. But I think we have a real chance,” said Sen. Michael Bennet (D., Colo.). “And you can feel the excitement among young people in particular in this country right now about the change that’s been made.”
The money, meanwhile, has been pouring in. For weeks, donors had been fretting about Biden’s standing atop the ticket and some major donors said they wouldn’t give. But once the president stepped aside, there was a reversal.
By the morning after Biden’s statement, the newly christened Harris campaign had raised about $50 million in grassroots donations. In about 24 hours, it collected $81 million, and by Monday night, the campaign had pulled in $100 million.
The party’s biggest super PAC, Future Forward, said it received $150 million in commitments from donors once Harris emerged as the standard-bearer. And that type of fundraising doesn’t appear to be abating.
Harris is scheduled to appear Saturday at a fundraising event in Pittsfield, Mass., alongside singer James Taylor, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, pianist Emanuel Ax and historian Heather Cox Richardson. The event sold out before Biden’s announcement—and the campaign is looking to schedule more Harris fundraisers in the coming weeks.
“Listen, the last 72 hours have been pretty extraordinary. I think I booked a million-dollar fundraiser for her within six hours of the announcement, from my donors,” said Murphy, the Connecticut senator. “So it’s pretty remarkable how excited people are, how people are sort of getting up off the mat.”
Joshua Jamerson, Tarini Parti and Katy Stech Ferek contributed to this article.
Write to Ken Thomas at ken.thomas@wsj.com and Lindsay Wise at lindsay.wise@wsj.com
