Harris’s donor prospectus described plan to maintain Democratic Party influence
Kamala Harris joined Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed at a roundtable on Black maternal health in Detroit this week, according to a Saturday column by Arwa Mahdawi in the Guardian. The appearance is one of several recent campaign stops that have returned the former vice president to the national political stage ahead of a possible second presidential run.
Harris told voters in Detroit that she is still deciding what to do about a 2028 run, Mahdawi reported. She has made no official announcement, but Mahdawi wrote that Harris “seems to be testing the political waters through midterm campaigning.” Michigan was one of the states Harris lost to Trump in 2024.
Harris is scheduled to campaign with Senator Jon Ossoff in Georgia next month and to attend an event in Las Vegas with Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford for his gubernatorial bid, according to Mahdawi.
The Guardian, citing the New York Times, reported this week that Harris’s aides had circulated a donor prospectus in July “that showed how she would try to maintain her influence atop the Democratic Party as she considered another run for president in 2028.” The document, which solicited funds for campaign travel, explained how Harris could boost midterm candidates and asserted that the current moment is “uniquely suited to Vice President Harris and a broad coalition already in motion.”
Mahdawi wrote that “numerous Democratic candidates have publicly stated that they don’t want Harris’s toxic brand anywhere near their elections.” El-Sayed, by contrast, appeared with Harris at the maternal health roundtable.
El-Sayed, meanwhile, “seems to have decided that an alliance with Harris is mutually beneficial,” the Guardian reported. “It gives the progressive candidate an inroad into the establishment and might help him win more support with Black voters,” the column said.
El-Sayed has said he opposes military aid to Israel and has termed the situation in Gaza a genocide, Mahdawi reported, a characterization that numerous human rights groups and genocide experts have also made. Harris alienated many progressives and Arab Americans by her stance on Gaza during the 2024 campaign, and Mahdawi wrote that an alliance with El-Sayed appeared intended to rebuild credibility with those voters.
Harris’s outreach extends beyond Michigan. Last year, she offered only the most lukewarm of endorsements for Zohran Mamdani, telling reporters, “He’s the Democratic nominee, and he should be supported.” Axios reported in early July that Harris called the New York mayor a couple of days after three left-wing candidates he had endorsed won their primaries over establishment-backed candidates.
Axios also reported that Harris had reached out to pro-Palestinian activists and Arab American leaders, including James Zogby, founder and president of the Arab American Institute. Zogby told Slate this week that he and Harris had had a “long talk,” which he felt good about.
The Democratic National Committee’s 2024 autopsy report did not mention Gaza once, despite post-election analyses identifying the issue as a factor in Democratic losses among young and progressive voters. Mahdawi wrote that Harris appears to be “waking up to the realization that her almost unconditional support for Israel hurt her in the previous election and is something she will have to rectify if she wants to run again.”
Mahdawi cited polls showing a record 60% of US adults now hold an unfavorable view of Israel and that the vast majority of Democrats support an arms embargo.
In her column, Mahdawi wrote that the outreach may be coming “too little too late” for Harris’s political brand and that it is “too late for the tens of thousands of Palestinians the Biden-Harris administration were complicit in killing.”
The Guardian column appeared Saturday as part of Mahdawi’s “Week in Patriarchy” series.