Doug Emhoff, the husband of Vice President Kamala Harris, was at a West Coast coffee shop with friends on Sunday, when President Joe Biden announced that he was leaving the November election against former President Donald Trump.
Emhoff had left his phone in the car. But people were waving and nodding to him. A friend passed one to him so he could read the letter that Biden posted on social media.
When Emhoff got back to his phone, it was virtually “self-immolating” with messages, he said at a Falmouth fundraiser on Wednesday for the Maine Democratic Party after campaign events in Portland.
“Where the … were you?” Harris asked him when he finally reached her, Emhoff said, according to a recording of his remarks provided to the Bangor Daily News.
Emhoff’s comments detailed Harris’ immediate work to lock down the nomination in the minutes after Biden’s historic announcement on Sunday. She has all but done so, securing enough delegates to formally win it ahead of the Democratic National Convention next month.
By the time of his announcement, Biden had already informed the vice president of his decision. He endorsed her soon after. Emhoff said Harris was in Washington in a sweatshirt bearing the name of Howard University, her alma mater, for 10 hours with staffers and making the case to others that she was the best person to take Biden’s place.
“In the last 72 hours, we’ve seen a leader emerge,” he said to applause.
Biden has trailed Trump in virtually every national poll so far during this cycle, with the trouble deepening since the 81-year-old’s disastrous late June debate performance against the former president. Harris has entered the race in a slightly better polling position but still looks like an underdog in the election.
Yet the switch has injected some life into the moribund Democratic ticket. Harris, who assumed Biden’s campaign infrastructure, raised $81 million in the 24 hours after the switch. In Maine, her campaign recruited 400 new volunteers within a similar period, the campaign said.
Gov. Janet Mills stuck by Biden after the debate but used a call between the president and Democratic governors to relay concerns about his standing in Maine, which has not backed a Republican in a presidential election since 1988. Trump has twice won the one elector from Maine’s 2nd District, and polls this year have shown a close statewide race.
Since the switch, Harris, a former California senator and state attorney general, has focused on her past as a prosecutor, noting Trump’s felony convictions in New York. Emhoff headlined an abortion-rights roundtable Wednesday in Portland, although voters have favored Trump over Biden on issues from immigration to the economy.
Republicans have downplayed the effects of the switch, saying Harris is firmly tied to the unpopular elements of Biden’s administration. Trump’s campaign has argued that the unprecedented switch to Harris will result in a polling bump that will soon diminish.
“After this initial excitement of her being on the ticket and Biden being off the ticket, I don’t think it’s going to matter in the long run over the next three and a half months,” said former U.S. Rep. Bruce Poliquin, a Republican who represented the 2nd District until 2018 and is serving as a Trump surrogate this year.
