In some ways, running for governor of her home state of California seems like an obvious next act for Vice President Kamala Harris when she leaves office this week after narrowly losing a brutal presidential campaign to Donald Trump.
The timing is right: she would have room to file for the office before the primary in June 2026. And in a race with no real frontrunner, she would likely freeze out most Democratic contenders.
Most failed presidential candidates never seek any office again — but when they do, they often give the presidency one more try.
Hello Trump II.“It would be rare for Harris to run for an office other than president,” political analyst and USC professor Dan Schnur said, “but being governor of her home state could potentially be very alluring for her.”
Harris is only 60 — a relative political youngster — with a house in Brentwood she shares with her husband, Doug Emhoff, that escaped the Los Angeles fires. She’s got a nationwide fundraising juggernaut waiting in the wings and the presumed goodwill, tempered by stinging disappointment, of Democrats in California and across the country who had hoped she would be the one placing her hand on the Bible during the presidential inauguration Monday.
“She has notoriety. She has a presence. She has a voice. She has a chance to do a lot of good on the planet, right?” Bill Whalen, a fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and former speechwriter for Republican Gov. Pete Wilson, asked. “The question is, how does she see herself doing good?”
Perhaps she will seek a philanthropic endeavor or a private sector post or join a prestigious law firm. Or maybe she isn’t finished with politics. If not the governorship in 2026, perhaps another run at the presidency in 2028?
Richard Nixon, after all, came home to California after losing the 1960 presidential election, lost the governor’s race in 1962 to Pat Brown (famously telling reporters “you won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore,”) before staging a mighty political recovery, winning his second attempt at the White House in 1968. His legacy was undone, however, by a pair of reporters investigating a break-in at the Watergate Hotel.
