Could the road to the White House run through…Sacramento?
If it does, let’s hope it’s as good as California’s bullet train.
According to a new poll, if former Vice President Kamala Harris decides to formally enter the 2026 race for California governor, the office is hers for the taking.
The survey, sponsored by Emerson College Polling/Inside California Politics/The Hill, of registered California voters found that if the election were today, 57 percent would support Harris, with everyone else* toiling in the single digits (*except for Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, who is currently polling at negative 37).
In fact, the only thing polling lower than Karen Bass right now is Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl halftime show.
Spencer Kimball, executive director of Emerson College Polling, said that Harris’ support among her fellow Californians was robust and overwhelming. “Support for Harris is strongest among women (60 percent), Hispanics (61 percent), and Black voters (64 percent),” he concluded.
Kamala’s also killing it with voters who own yoga mats, have a gratitude practice, or cried when Joy Reid’s show got canceled on MSNBC.
Certainly these results are already impacting the decisions being made by declared and potential candidates for the state’s highest office.
For years, California Attorney General Rob Bonta has had his eyes on the governor’s mansion. However, to the surprise of many, he recently decided to seek reelection as attorney general and back Harris to succeed termed-out Governor Gavin Newsom. Bonta recently explained his decision to Politico, saying, “Kamala Harris would be a great governor…I would support her if she ran, I’ve always supported her in everything she’s done. She would be field-clearing.”
The way I see it, one of two reasons would motivate Harris to jump into the race for governor – either she’s looking for a soft landing after losing to President Donald Trump in November, and would rather have history remember her as the woman who bounced back after a crushing loss and became chief executive of the largest state in the union – as opposed to a loser who disappeared from the public stage. Or, she’s looking for a way to keep herself relevant so she can run for president again in 2028.
According to former Richard Nixon speech writer and author of the book “Behind Closed Doors: In the Room with Reagan & Nixon,” Ken Khachigian, the latter is exactly what Richard Nixon did after he lost the 1960 presidential race to John F. Kennedy. “Nixon had no real desire to be governor of California, and he believed Kennedy was unbeatable in 1964. However, there was enormous pressure from Eisenhower and other national political figures for him to run. When we worked on his memoirs, Nixon told me re 1962: ‘Unless you come to the aid of the party when it needs you, it isn’t going to need you.’ That comment suggested that in 1961 he was still looking forward, and in order to ‘stay in the game,’ he needed a prominent political profile. Whether or not his motivation was another run for the presidency, he clearly believed a withdrawal from the political arena might render him irrelevant as a major player.”
Ken also told me that if Kamala Harris runs, she may have different motivations than Nixon had. “If she doesn’t run for governor and wins, she goes down in history as a losing candidate for president who got there by meeting a diversity checkbox, who couldn’t make it to the first presidential primary when she tried it on her own, and whose career largely depended on the good fortune of being tied to donors, sponsors and mentors – not to her innate political skills. I also believe she would be motivated by sheer vanity and the need to be ensconced again in the accoutrements of office, with drivers, bodyguards, schedulers – along with the international cachet of the title. On July 20, her Secret Service protection drifts away, and she will be desperate again for the custodial care of the servant class,” he said.
If Harris does in fact end up pulling the trigger and running for governor, whether she ultimately ends up running for president or not, she will almost certainly be part of every poll of prospective White House candidates, and be regarded as a top tier candidate, to say the least.
Democratic primary voting for the 2028 presidential race won’t officially start until January of that year, but you could make a case that the first Democratic primary in the 2028 race for the White House will be the 2026 California governor’s race.
If California Democrats select Kamala Harris to be the next governor of the Golden State, she will have won the first effective Democratic primary of the 2028 presidential race.
And somewhere, Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown will be muttering, “Wait, what happened?”
And that begs the question, do California Democrats really want Kamala Harris to be the Democratic nominee for president again in 2028?
I know Republicans do.
John Phillips can be heard weekdays from noon to 3 p.m. on “The John Phillips Show” on KABC/AM 790.