July 26, 2024, 11:32 a.m.
Vice President Kamala Harris is on the glidepath to the nomination and she will not only be the first Democratic nominee from one of the country's bluest states, but the first Democratic nominee from any Western state.
According to FiveThirtyEight, most Democratic presidential nominees come from the East Coast—though this has a lot to do with how the country developed and how political power slowly coalesced in the West.
Harris’ California roots represents "the way the Democratic party has changed in the last 20-30 years to become a more diverse party,” Jason McDaniel, an associate professor of political science at San Francisco State University, told Hotline.
With Harris hailing from Oakland, California and touting her experience as district attorney of San Francisco and attorney general of California on the trail, the Golden State is likely to be getting increased attention for the rest of the campaign season—for better or worse.
“California is going to be a lightning rod for this campaign. Republicans have been using California as shorthand for all the liberal things they hate,” McDaniel said.
Republicans have used cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles in their example of how soft on crime Democrats are.
For example, last year, the RNC put out a 100% AI-generated ad that depicted the dystopian world we would come to live in should President Biden win reelection. The ad is filled with generated images of what appears to be San Francisco in various states of disrepair.
Should Harris continue to talk about California, it’s likely that she will talk about her upbringing in Oakland and her experience as a prosecutor, but not much else.
Her path to the presidency is going to run through the Sun Belt states of North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada, as well as the traditional battleground Blue Wall states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.
The last Californian to win the presidency was President Reagan in 1984. To win these swing-state voters, she’ll need to not be seen as a California liberal.
“I suspect that she’ll have to do some distancing from the state,” McDaniel said. “This isn’t Reagan, you can’t go to the ranch.”
— Hannah Thacker
hthacker@nationaljournal.com
