If Harris really is the ‘last voice in the room,’ as Biden suggested she would be when he introduced her to Delaware on Wednesday, her influence – and California’s – could be profound. Reagan brought Caspar Weinberger, Ed Meese and Lyn Nofziger from California to Washington. And in heavy-handed Democratic California, there are many more Democrats where those numbers came from.
“California has been too often irrelevant in national politics since Ronald Reagan in 1988,” said Ace Smith, who was a top strategist in Harris’ presidential campaign.
“With a major California rise in a state office, that just has ripple effects,” he said. “My prediction: More Californians in higher positions in the coming decades than you’ve literally seen since the Reagan era.”
In California this week, Democratic politicians who did not like them withdrew themselves for their success, and put their criticism of them in private back in more favorable light. Those who have supported her for years saw her perspectives improve. Everyone posed for a Washington that might not have mocked the state’s energy or water challenges, or would suggest that its wildfire could be prevented by listening.
Describing what he called a “prejudice against California” in Washington – a return to the state’s economic and cultural status in the world – Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) Said: “I think with a vice president from California that kind of disinterest or disgust for the West will not show.”
“We have always, at least in the last half century, had tremendous legislative power,” Schiff said. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and minority leader Kevin McCarthy, among others influential lawmakers, are from California. “But what we are missing is power in the executive department, and with Kamala we will now have both.”
It’s not just California that will make an impact if Biden and Harris win. Although the state is hardly representative of any state west of the Rockies, it anchors the liberal coast. In Washington, Jamal Council, a veteran Democratic strategist who advised the state’s governor, Jay Inslee, in his presidential campaign last year, “It’s honestly ridiculous that it takes so long for someone from the West to be elected. for the ticket. “
For Republicans, the idea of a California Democrat in the White House is a nightmare. Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel called Harris “an extremely liberal San Francisco,” recalling years of criticism that Republicans have put Democrats by joking at the state’s liberal reputation.
But even this practice is no longer as effective for the GOP as it was a decade ago, when California was in the throes of its budget crisis and its liberal approach to issues such as gay and marijuana marriage was not as widespread. were accepted.
In a stagnant acknowledgment of the changing landscape, Trump campaign officials have privately expressed to Harris’ selection that they would have preferred Biden to choose another candidate. Susan Rice, the former national security adviser, would have allowed Trump to trust the Benghazi scandal, a key feature of the 2016 presidential campaign. A more progressive selection, as sen. Elizabeth Warren, would have done more than Harris’ California family tree to paint Biden than looked to the left flank of the party.
Geography certainly had no interest in Biden’s thinking. California is so heavily democratic that Biden could have celebrated the state in November with a set beast as his running mate. And while camp strategists have largely ignored the idea that a vice presidential nominee could deliver great battlefield status, Biden had thought he needed a geographic lift, he could Rep. Val Demings of Florida, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan and Sen have selected. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin.
Instead, California got Harris. And when she becomes vice president, Antonio Villaraigosa, the former mayor of Los Angeles, said, “We will have one in the White House.”
“I think California will benefit,” he said. “This is their basis.”
