Vice President Harris formally secured the Democratic presidential nomination on Friday, culminating a long career and dramatic rise to become the nation’s first Black woman selected as a major party’s nominee and capping one of the most tumultuous months in recent American political history.
“I will officially accept your nomination next week, once the virtual voting period is closed,” Harris said on a live stream as delegates continued to cast ballots. “But already I’m happy to know we have enough delegates to secure the nomination.” The process officially continues through Monday, despite the foregone conclusion.
Attention now shifts to whom Harris will pick as a running mate, a process that is expected to wrap up in coming days before she and her vice-presidential pick launch a nationwide campaign tour next week across seven battleground states. She has narrowed her search for a running mate to six finalists and is planning to conduct interviews with them this weekend, according to two people familiar with the process who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential deliberations.
Those finalists are Govs. Andy Beshear of Kentucky, J.B. Pritzker of Illinois, Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and Tim Walz of Minnesota, as well as Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona, the people said. Representatives for Beshear, Buttigieg and Shapiro confirmed that those officials had canceled previously scheduled plans for this weekend.
Harris, who was born in California to an Indian mother and Jamaican father, becomes just the second person of color in America’s nearly 250-year history to head a major presidential ticket, after Barack Obama did in 2008. If she prevails over Republican Donald Trump, she would be the nation’s first female and first Asian American president.
The Democratic Party has also never had before a presidential nominee from the West, a 2019 analysis from FiveThirtyEight found.
Parties typically nominate their ticket during their in-person convention, but Democrats were worried about ballot qualification deadlines in several states and decided instead to hold a virtual nomination before the Democratic National Convention later this month. Convention planners are preparing a symbolic roll call for prime-time television coverage at the gathering in Chicago, with representatives of each state offering their votes for Harris in a customized fashion.
