By Deborah Bailey
AFRO Contributing Editor
Former Vice President Kamala Harris is hinting at her future political plans. While it’s no secret that Harris is a likely candidate for another run for the presidency in 2028, a campaign for governor of California may also be in the cards in 2026.
Harris has filed a statement of intention with the California Secretary of State’s office. According to the campaign section of the website, the statement is not an official declaration of her candidacy but is required before candidates start fundraising.
Forty-two individuals have filed to run for governor as of March 16. Harris told sources that she will decide before the end of the summer.
Harris’ name also is being mentioned widely in political and civil society circles as the Democratic Party’s choice for another presidential run in 2028. She is the top choice for likely voters, according to an Echelon Insights poll. Harris garnered 41 percent of support from respondents asked to name the candidate they would vote for if the 2028 Democratic primary were held today. The opinion research firm conducted the poll Nov. 14-18.
Harris also established Pioneer 49, an LLC, in her home state of California in December 2024. “Pioneer” is Harris’ Secret Service code name, and she was the 49th vice president of the U.S. The organization will likely be used to serve as a base for Harris’ upcoming public agenda.
Political science scholar Breanna Gray warns the Democratic Party has work to do to regain the loyalty of Black Americans if Harris intends to run for the White House as a Democrat in 2028.
“Parties matter. A lot of the success or failure of the candidate is tied to the party,” said Gray, an assistant professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland, College Park. “The direction of the Democratic Party in the next couple of years will certainly have an impact both on who will be running and how attached Black people will feel.”
Howard University political science professor Keneshia N. Grant ties Black loyalty to the Democratic Party to the Great Migration of Black people from the rural South to urban centers across the West, Midwest, and North from the 1910s through the second half of the 20th century. In her 2020 book “The Great Migration and the Democratic Party,” Grant writes, “What looks like a wholesale defection from the Republican Party by the Black electorate can also be understood as the Democratic Party’s mobilization of newly arrived Black migrants.”
But for Gray, those historic ties are beginning to fade. “Black people are really rethinking the promises made by the Democratic Party,” Gray said.
She said Harris wasn’t always taken seriously by the Party and Black people were watching. “There was a lot of disappointment with how Kamala Harris was treated by the Democratic Party,” said Gray.
Political scientist and social movements scholar Jarvis Hall said that Harris must continue to be visible and speak up on issues of importance to those who voted for her in 2024.
“Whether she runs for governor or president, she can’t disappear from the public stage,” said Hall, who is on the political science faculty at North Carolina Central University in Durham, N.C.
“She is the standard bearer for the Democratic Party. As the 2024 presidential candidate, she needs to be one of the voices speaking up about the policies of the Trump administration that have hurt many of the 74 million people that voted for her,” Hall said.
“Who else but Harris? While she doesn’t have to be the only one speaking out about Trump’s policies, she definitely needs to be one of a cadre of Democratic voices speaking up and out,” he added.
Hall sees promise in the Democratic Party nationwide when looking at new leadership like Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, and U.S. Reps. Jazmine Crockett (Texas) and Maxwell Frost (Florida).
Meanwhile, Gray sees Black people turning to alternative candidates in the future, like Cornell West who ran in the 2024 presidential elections as a candidate in the Justice for All Party.
“With the racism and xenophobia in the rest of America, Blacks may have gotten to that point where we need alternatives outside of the two-party system,” she said.