New Delhi: Kamala Harris, Vice-President of the US, officially secured the nomination as the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate Friday after receiving the majority support from party delegates.
Harris becomes the first African-American woman and first South Asian woman to be a presidential candidate for a major US political party. If she defeats Republican nominee Donald Trump in the November poll, she would be the US’s first woman president.
“With historic momentum and a groundswell of support, Vice-President Harris has officially met the threshold, securing a majority of the delegates she needs to receive the Democratic nomination on Monday,” said Jaime Harrison, chair of the Democratic National Committee, in a statement Friday.
“But I want to be clear – there is still time for delegates to cast their ballots. I encourage every single delegate across the country to meet this moment and cast their ballot so that we head into our convention in Chicago with a show of force as a united Democratic Party,” he added.
The Democratic Party started a virtual roll call vote Thursday and by afternoon Friday had enough votes from delegates to secure the nomination. Voting will remain open till Monday. However, since Harris is the only candidate who qualified for the roll call, there is no real suspense about the final result.
“I am honoured to be the Democratic nominee for President of the United States. I will officially accept the nomination next week. This campaign is about people coming together, fuelled by love of country, to fight for the best of who we are,” said the Vice-President in a post on X.
The virtual roll call was scheduled by the Democrats well in advance to ensure that their candidate would not miss being on the ballot in states like Ohio. The party’s national convention is scheduled for 19-22 August in Chicago, which is after the registration deadline for some of the state ballots.
The vote brings to an end tumultuous few weeks in US politics, which witnessed a disastrous debate performance by incumbent President Joe Biden and eventually saw him withdraw from the US presidential race, as well as an assassination attempt on Trump.
A few days after the assassination bid, Trump was formally nominated at the Republican National Convention as the party’s presidential candidate.
Harris is only the second person of colour to lead a major party ticket since former US president Barack Obama. She has been facing escalating attacks from Trump over her heritage, with the former US president sharing a photo of Harris in a sari on social media, and commenting at an event earlier that she “happened to turn black”.
Also Read: How concerns over Biden’s age snowballed, left him isolated with flagging campaign & led to his exit
Enthusiasm among Democrats
According to media reports, Harris has no scheduled events over Saturday and Sunday as the focus is on picking her vice-presidential running mate.
The Democratic nominee is scheduled to start campaigning with her running mate early next week.
Multiple Democratic leaders, including Governors Josh Shapiro, Andy Beshear and Tim Walz, and Senator Mark Kelly have, according to media reports, cancelled their events to hold conversations with Harris this weekend, before she makes her final decision.
The Democratic campaign received a record-setting $310 million in fundraising for the month of July, a large majority of which came after Harris was announced as the presidential candidate — indicating the high levels of enthusiasm among the party base. The amount is more than double of what the Trump campaign raised in the same month — $139 million.
The US Vice-President has also made moves to hire new advisers for her campaign staff, including David Plouffe, who managed Obama’s first run to the US presidency in 2008.
According to The New York Times, several of the new staff hires were involved in the presidential campaign of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 run.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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