Kamala Harris earns enough delegate support to become Democratic nominee

Kamala Harris has said she is looking forward to “formally accepting the [presidential] nomination” of the Democratic party after she earned enough support from delegates including hundreds from her native California.

“When I announced my campaign for President, I said I intended to go out and earn this nomination,” she said in a statement late on Monday.

“Tonight, I am proud to have secured the broad support needed to become our party’s nominee, and as a daughter of California, I am proud that my home state’s delegation helped put our campaign over the top. I look forward to formally accepting the nomination soon.”

Speaker emerita Nancy Pelosi made the motion to endorse Harris for president at a virtual meeting of California’s DNC delegation on Monday evening, a spokesperson confirmed.

Pelosi, who represents San Francisco in Congress, announced that with the endorsement of California’s delegation, Harris had earned enough delegates to win the Democratic nomination for president in August.

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Earlier on Monday, top Democrats rallied to support Harris in their bid to defeat Republican Donald Trump.

Harris was headed to the battleground state of Wisconsin on Tuesday as her campaign for the White House kicks into high gear. The event in Milwaukee will be her first full-fledged campaign event since announcing her candidacy.

She offered a sense of how she plans to attack Trump in a speech to campaign staff in Wilmington, Delaware, earlier on Monday, referring to her past of pursuing “predators” and “fraudsters” as San Francisco district attorney and California attorney general.

“So hear me when I say I know Donald Trump’s type,” she said of her rival, a convicted felon who was found liable for sexual assault in civil court. Other courts have found fraud was committed in his business, charitable foundation and private university.

She also cast herself as a defender of economic opportunity and abortion access. “Our fight for the future is also a fight for freedoms,” she said. “The baton is in our hands.”

Biden, who is recovering from Covid-19 at his house in Rehoboth, spoke by phone to the staff first, saying he would be out on the campaign trail for Harris and adding: “I’ll be doing whatever Kamala Harris wants me or needs me to do.”

When Harris took the microphone to address staff, Biden said to her: “I’m watching you, kid. I love you.” Harris put her hands on her heart and said: “I love you, Joe.”

Joe Biden’s departure freed his delegates to vote for whomever they choose at next month’s convention. And Harris, whom Biden backed after ending his candidacy, worked quickly to secure support from a majority.

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Big-name endorsements on Monday, including from governors Wes Moore of Maryland, Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, JB Pritzker of Illinois and Andy Beshear of Kentucky, left a vanishing list of potential rivals.

According to an Associated Press tally, Harris had 2,668 delegates, well beyond the simple majority of 1,976 needed to clinch the nomination on the first ballot.

The survey is unofficial, the AP said, as Democratic delegates are free to vote for the candidate of their choice when the party formally chooses its candidate. Delegates could still change their minds before 7 August but nobody else received any votes in the AP survey, and 57 delegates said they were undecided.

Pelosi, who had been one of the notable holdouts, initially encouraging a primary to strengthen the eventual nominee, said she was lending her “enthusiastic support” to Harris’s effort to lead the party.

Pelosi said: “Politically, make no mistake: Kamala Harris as a woman in politics is brilliantly astute – and I have full confidence that she will lead us to victory in November.”

A tweet late on Monday night announced that Pelosi’s office had confirmed the endorsement of Harris.

Democratic National Committee (DNC) chairman Jaime Harrison vowed that the party would deliver a presidential nominee by 7 August. A virtual nominating process before the national convention in Chicago, beginning on 19 August, is still needed.

“I want to assure you that we are committed to an open and fair nominating process,” Harrison said on a conference call.

The DNC had said earlier that a virtual vote would take place between 1 and 5 August, in order to have the nomination process completed by 7 August, the date by which Ohio law had required a nominee to be in place to make the state’s ballot.

Ohio lawmakers subsequently pushed back that deadline to 1 September, but party officials said they hoped to beat the 7 August deadline to avoid any legal risk in the state.

Winning the nomination is only the first item on a staggering political to-do list for Harris after Biden’s decision to exit the race, which she learned about on a Sunday-morning call with the president.

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 the election.

But Harris has also been raking in campaign contributions. Her campaign said on Monday she had raised more than $100m since Biden stepped aside on Sunday, surpassing the $95m that the Biden campaign had in the bank at the end of June.

Hollywood donors ended their “Dembargo” on political donations, as fundraisers and celebrities from rapper Cardi B to Oscar winner Jamie Lee Curtis and TV producer Shonda Rhimes endorsed Harris.

Wisconsin, where Harris will campaign on Tuesday, is among a trio of rust belt states, including Michigan and Pennsylvania, widely considered as must-wins for any candidate, and where Biden was lagging Trump.

“There are independents and young people who did not like their choices, and Harris has a chance to win them,” said Paul Kendrick, executive director of the Democratic group Rust Belt Rising, which does routine polling in the battleground states where voting preferences can swing either way.

Reuters and the Associated Press contributed reporting