Top elected Democrats in Maine began to rally behind Vice President Kamala Harris after President Joe Biden’s stunning Sunday exit from the November election.
Signs point to Maine’s delegates to the August national convention doing the same thing, as those in other states have done. Here are three things to expect as the process plays out on the way to the race against former President Donald Trump.
Delegates meet tonight. A formal switch of allegiances should follow.
The events leading up to the Democratic National Convention on Aug. 19 is officially where the switch from Biden to another candidate will happen. The party has been planning to meet early in the month to formally make the nomination because of wrinkles in Ohio ballot access law.
Maine has 32 delegates to the national convention and two alternates who were already planning to meet on Monday evening to go over party rules. The switch on the ticket will now be a topic of discussion. All signs are pointing to an orderly change to Harris.
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Aside from Biden, Gov. Janet Mills was among the first party figures to endorse Harris after the president left the race on Sunday. Harris was California’s attorney general, and the Maine governor served in the same office here during an overlapping tenure.
Mills called Harris “a fighter for the people.” Maine House Speaker Rachel Talbot Ross, D-Portland, almost immediately endorsed her as well. Five state delegations to the national convention backed Harris on Sunday, led by Tennessee, meaning she locked down 531 of the 1,986 delegates she will need to win the nod, according to The Hill.
“I think that she can beat Donald Trump,” said delegate Marpheen Chann of Portland. “The polls show that she performs better than most against Donald Trump, and I’m excited to get to work for her.”
Biden’s Maine campaign has already turned into the Harris campaign.
The Biden campaign filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission that formally turned itself into the Harris campaign. One of her first moves is to make a vice presidential nomination to answer Trump’s pick of Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance at last week’s Republican convention.
It looks like little will be changing on the ground. Earlier this year, the Biden campaign named four operatives to their Maine-based team, led by political director BJ McCollister, a lobbyist who was once the chief of staff to Senate President Troy Jackson, D-Allagash.
On Monday, Amy Cookson, the campaign’s state spokesperson, said the team would be remaining in place. Biden campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon told staffers something similar on Sunday, according to Politico.
Harris may perform slightly better than Biden here, but it’s unclear.
This is an unprecedented situation in our recent political history. A president has not abruptly ended a reelection campaign since 1968, Lyndon B. Johnson did that in March amid outcry over the Vietnam War. Biden dropped out after a horrible June debate performance against Trump heightened pre-existing voter concerns about his age of 81.
Harris has been performing only slightly better than Biden in head-to-head polls with the former president. While Biden is 3 percentage points down in the most recent Real Clear Politics polling average, Harris sits at a 1.7-point disadvantage.
She is not a popular figure, with a recent survey from The Economist and YouGov putting her at 39 percent approval. The good news for Harris is that Trump’s favorability is not high either. He was at 45 percent approval in the same survey, and he has only cracked that mark once in polling averages going back to 2016.
We have not seen recent Maine polling that helps us answer many questions about Harris. There are some clues in a poll of New Hampshire released last week by the state’s flagship university. A majority of Democrats wanted Biden to drop out, and 45 percent of them thought Harris was the best choice to replace him at the head of the ticket.
Harris appears to be far from a perfect candidate, but she is the only one that Democrats have right now. The idea is that she can reinvigorate a flagging campaign, but she still enters as an underdog in a difficult election.
