Harris accumulates half of needed delegates: reports
US Vice President Kamala Harris has moved swiftly to lock up Democratic delegates behind her campaign for the White House after President Joe Biden stepped aside amid concerns from within their party that he would be unable to defeat Republican Donald Trump.
Biden’s exit on Sunday, prompted by Democratic worries over his fitness for office, was a seismic shift to the presidential contest that upended both major political parties’ carefully honed plans for the 2024 race.
Aiming to put weeks of intra-party drama over Biden’s candidacy behind them, prominent Democratic elected officials, party leaders and political organisations quickly lined up behind Harris in the hours after Biden announced he was dropping his re-election campaign.
Biden’s departure frees his delegates to vote for whomever they choose.
Harris, whom Biden backed after ending his candidacy, is thus far the only declared candidate and was working to quickly secure endorsements from a majority of delegates.
Additional endorsements on Monday, including Maryland governor Wes Moore, Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, Illinois governor JB Pritzker and Kentucky governor Andy Beshear, left a dwindling list of potential rivals to Harris.
Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, who had been one of the notable holdouts to Harris, initially encouraging a primary to strengthen the eventual nominee, endorsed Harris on Monday.
Pelosi said she was lending her “enthusiastic support” to Harris’ effort to lead the party.
More than 1000 pledged delegates have told the Associated Press or announced that they plan to support Harris at the convention, which is more than half of the pledged delegates she needs in order to clinch the nomination.
Democratic National Committee rules most recently set 1976 pledged delegates as the benchmark to win the nomination.
Winning the nomination is only the first item on a staggering political to-do list for her after Biden’s decision to exit the race, which she learned about on a Sunday morning call with the president.
If she is successful at locking up the nomination, she must also pick a running mate and pivot a massive political operation to boost her candidacy instead of Biden’s with just more than 100 days until Election Day.
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