Before Kamala Harris entered the race for president, a stalwart group of Democrats meeting every Thursday in San Jose to talk politics and write postcards for candidates had dwindled down to four or five — sometimes only two or three.
But just five days after the Bay Area native launched to the top of the Democratic ticket, they pushed several tables together at San Pedro Square to seat all 20 of them. One sported a tank top with a large comma and the letters LA — a play on the correct pronunciation of Harris’ first name: “comma-la.”
“I’ve been reenergized,” said Stacy Palermini, 59, the same age as the vice president. “Nothing was going to hold me back from this.”
Harris’s candidacy has flipped the mood of the party, from “doom scrolling” the dismal news after President Joe Biden’s catastrophic debate performance and the MAGA surge at the Republican National Convention, to “hope scrolling” the headlines of record donations, the subsequent 160,000 White women conference call, TikTok memes, and burgeoning support. Former President Barack Obama’s expected endorsement came through on Friday.
“I was feeling complete dread,” said Erik Martinez, an LGBTQ activist from San Francisco. Now, he said, “I’m definitely feeling very invigorated and excited. I was just talking to some friends yesterday that we were all kind of feeling that energy that we felt during the first Obama presidential run.”
Trump, who appeared to be coasting to victory before Biden dropped out, already has launched attacks on his new rival, blaming her for problems of the Biden-Harris administration, including the border crisis and inflation. On Thursday, Trump described Harris as “a lunatic” and a “California socialist.”
And if Republicans are worried that Harris has a better chance of defeating Trump, they’re not showing it.
“I have no concerns whatsoever. I will tell you Trump will be president,” said Jan Soule, president of the Silicon Valley Association of Conservative Republicans. “Let’s be clear. Anybody who knows Kamala here, she’s not going to be tougher to beat than Joe Biden.”
But Harris’s entrance into the race has not only revived Palermini’s “Solidarity Sundays” feminist group that formed in 2017 to resist Donald Trump’s presidency, it’s inspired a full reboot of a sister organization in the East Bay and motivated scores of Bay Area Democrats to mobilize their resources and open their wallets.
“I’ve already donated three times in the last week just to say, ‘I’m here, I’m present and accounted for, and we’re going to make this happen,’ ” said Zoe Ellis, a choir director from Richmond who was one of 40,000 Black women who joined a Zoom call this week to support Harris.
Even Pantsuit Nation, a national grassroots group that encouraged women to wear Hillary Clinton-like pantsuits to the polls in 2016, is getting its groove back.
“I’m just saying,” one of the members of its Facebook group wrote, “Kamala absolutely slays in a pantsuit.”
But can Harris maintain the momentum? Her first campaign for president in 2020 was so mismanaged and short-lived that she didn’t make it to the Iowa caucuses. Her stump speeches while campaigning with Biden in 2020 often seemed uninspired.
But she has gained steam over the past two years in her more recent role criticizing the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe vs. Wade and the conservative states that are severely limiting abortion access — a new talent and critical topic that Stanford political science professor Bruce Cain believes will serve her well.
“She seems to have improved as a candidate,” Cain said. “She doesn’t have to be a Barack Obama. She just has to be a good explainer” of why she is better for the country.
Harris is already looking tougher than Biden to beat, according to a New York Times/Sienna College poll conducted this week. Among likely voters, Trump is still leading, but by only a sliver, with Trump at 48% to Harris at 47%.
Zina Slaughter, of Richmond, said she will be doing all she can to push Harris over the edge.
“I will be making phone calls, phone banking, definitely,” said Slaughter, a member of Harris’s same sorority who also joined the Black women zoom call. “I’m looking into actually canvassing, helping to organize a voter mobilization.”
So will Debbie Mesloh, who has worked on all of Harris’s California campaigns and flew to Maricopa County in Arizona in 2020 to knock on doors and persuade voters to cast their ballots for the Biden-Harris ticket.
“We will be raising money, organizing within our community — women, lawyers, former staffers, her friends, people from the gym in San Francisco, people from her favorite cookie place,” Mesloh said. “They’re going to dig deep and do whatever it takes to help her win.”
