Kamala Harris is returning to the campaign trail to help Democrats in some of the tightest US midterm races, putting the former vice president back before voters as she weighs whether to make a third run for the presidency in 2028.
The Democratic Party’s unsuccessful 2024 standard-bearer has made relatively few public appearances this year. But with her party trying to break the Republican hold on Congress on November 3, Harris is rallying in Georgia, Mississippi, Nevada, New Hampshire and Wisconsin, a return likely to renew questions about her political future as a crowded field of potential 2028 contenders takes shape. Colom is seeking to become the first Democratic US senator elected in Mississippi since 1982, and polls show an unusually tight race with Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith.
She spoke to scores of Culinary Workers Union members alongside gubernatorial candidate Aaron Ford, Nevada’s first Black attorney general, who she said would be the “first Black governor west of the Mississippi. “We got a serious fight in front of us,” Harris said. “At the end of a campaign, you bring out your heavy hitters,” said Elaine Kamarck, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a member of the Democratic National Committee. The day after Las Vegas, Harris led chants of “Mississippi matters!” to a crowd supporting Scott Colom in the city of Columbus. Harris opened with advice she said she gives young people she mentors: “Never let someone else’s limited ability to see your capacity be a limitation on your ambition,” she said.
“We are witnessing pure brutality come out of what is undoubtedly the most corrupt, callous and incompetent presidential administration. “That’s what’s going on here with her, and frankly with Trump. “Let me repeat that. And she did, louder than the first time, drawing cheers from the crowd.
Harris kicked off her tour in Las Vegas on Tuesday with a new stump speech attacking what she described as the cruelty of President Donald Trump, mixed with the aspirational aphorisms that have long been her calling card as the first Black and Asian person and first woman to become vice president.
