Kamala Harris touched down in Florida within 24 hours of Ron DeSantis challenging her to debate Florida’s new African American studies curriculum standards, which, among other things, includes a lesson on the “personal benefits” of being a slave. Harris declined the offer. Her itinerary was to visit the African Methodist Episcopal church in Orlando. “I will tell you there is no roundtable, no lecture, no invitation we will accept to debate an undeniable fact: There were no redeeming qualities of slavery,” she told the audience in early August.
It was Harris’s second visit to Florida within just over a week—a notable choice for a campaign stop. The Sunshine State looks more like a breeding ground for Trumpism and DeSantis’s “anti-woke” war, than the swing state it once was. Surely, the vice president’s message might have gone further even in neighboring Georgia. But insiders on the Biden-Harris reelection campaign say her trips were a preview of what to expect from the vice president in the run-up to the 2024 election. “She will go where she is needed,” Sheila Nix, Harris’s campaign chief of staff, told Vanity Fair. “The whole concept of our democracy really feels like hanging by a thread,” Nix said, and the Biden campaign plans to deploy Harris as a chief messenger in the fight against Republican extremism.
As the president gears up for what will undoubtedly be a contentious campaign season, Harris’s role in the reelection bid is coming into clearer focus. She’s no longer going to be the face of the administration at the border—an issue Republicans have relentlessly attacked her on—but rather a key attack dog against Republicans’ culture wars, from abortion rights and civil rights to gun control and threats to democracy. Americans should expect to see her in the battleground states, like Pennsylvania and North Carolina—and some fairly conservative states. Like Florida: “You don’t send the VP down here twice in a week if you’re not actually serious about it being part of your plan,” said Steve Schale, a Florida-based Democratic strategist who is the CEO of the pro-Biden PAC Unite the Country. “Do I think Republicans have an edge in 2024? Sure. I’m not an idiot…Democrats don’t have to win Florida to win the White House.” But if they can make the state more competitive—with the help of Harris—“they force the Republicans to spend money here, and that’s a win,” Schale said. By August 2024, the Biden campaign will need to make some tough decisions as to where to invest its resources. But right now, the game is creating options.
“The setting can be as important as the message,” a Democratic strategist who worked with the 2020 Biden campaign and served in the Obama administration, explained to VF. “Her travel isn’t necessarily an electoral strategy, but it is a strategy to get out there and make the case, and sometimes that’s even more important.”
There has been much discussion about Harris’s approval rating and whether she would be a “drag” on the Biden ticket. According to a recent NBC News poll, 32% of registered voters had a favorable opinion of the vice president and 49% had an unfavorable opinion. By comparison, in the same poll, Biden had a 39% job approval rating and 48% disapproval rating. In April, Axios reported the White House was moving swiftly to rehabilitate Harris’s image out of fear she could hold Biden back—an idea conservative talking heads have latched on to. For years, Harris has been dogged by a slow trickle of reports showing discord in her office and between her team and the West Wing. In a recent interview with ABC News, Harris dismissed her low approval ratings as a distraction from the achievements of the Biden administration.
Nix, too, was unsurprisingly apathetic. “It is missing a big part of the picture. She’s an extreme asset to the ticket with the groups that we need to make sure are turning out,” she said of the approval ratings. “You just have to not worry about the chatter. The issues—like reproductive rights, democracy, school safety, gun safety—that people really care about. She’s great and she’s a natural at talking about all those issues. We just have to keep our eye on the prize.” Harris allies say these polls are missing nuances of the political moment. Specifically, that her popularity and approval is higher amongst constituencies that could determine the 2024 election. “For the national Democratic grumbling about her numbers, she’s actually very popular among younger voters; she’s popular among communities of color; she’s more popular among women than men,” Schale said. “There are places where she’s a very effective voice and those are all constituencies that are very important to get to a win.”
Especially on issues like abortion where Biden isn’t seen as the most credible talking head. “There are topics and there are pieces of the policy platform that the Biden administration supports that Kamala is just a better message deliverer on,” one reproductive rights activist, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about the administration, told VF. “She is righteously angry, she is holding space for all of the emotions that people are feeling, and she’s just speaking in a way that resonates with people.”
Of a half dozen sources close to the Biden-Harris ticket VF spoke with, each noted the resounding victory for abortion rights in the Ohio special election last week as a sign the issue remains salient to voters. “It’s just sort of another proof point that a lot of the same issues that defined 2022 are gonna define 2024,” Schale said.
Hence, Florida. Aside from Donald Trump, there is perhaps no better bogeyman of Republican extremism than DeSantis. “We recognize that issues like abortion on the ballot, and the backlash against DeSantis’s extreme agenda, including book bans and soaring inflation in state, open up opportunity, but that it will be challenging,” a Biden campaign official told VF.
The campaign is betting Harris, most comfortable speaking on these issues, will be able to drive that message home. “She has found her footing,” the former Obama-Biden official said. “The scrutiny by which she came into office being the heir apparent was not anything a sitting vice president has had to contend with since 1992—and Al Gore was neither Black nor a woman.”
Abigail Tracy
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