This story will be updated.
PORTLAND, Maine — A visit to Maine by Doug Emhoff, the husband of Vice President Kamala Harris, would have been a political footnote if it happened a few weeks ago.
But his swing through the Portland area on Wednesday was much more intriguing now that he is hoping to become the nation’s first-ever first gentleman thanks to the sudden rise of Harris, who is a lock to replace President Joe Biden atop the Democratic ticket in November.
Biden announced Sunday he would leave the race following a poor debate performance in June against former President Donald Trump that led to calls from Democrats for the 81-year-old Biden to pass the mantle. His campaign now belongs to Harris, a former senator and California attorney general trying to become the first woman to win the White House.
While Harris, 59, enters as the underdog, she has injected energy into the Democratic campaign. Since Sunday, she has workshopped lines of attack on Trump, focusing heavily on abortion rights and the former president’s felony convictions in New York.
Emhoff hit that first issue hard at a Wednesday roundtable hosted by the campaign in Portland that he noted was his first official campaign event. The roundtable was only open to reporters for about 15 minutes before becoming a private event.
It featured advocates including Lauren Miller, who sued Texas after its abortion ban led her to leave the state for one, and Dana Peirce, a Yarmouth veterinarian who left Maine for an abortion after doctors discovered at 32 weeks that her fetus had a fatal anomaly. She inspired Gov. Janet Mills to propose a controversial law passed last year allowing abortions past fetal viability.
The U.S. Supreme Court, with a conservative majority cemented by Trump during his first term in office, overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling in 2022. The former president has irked strident anti-abortion members of his party by saying states should handle abortion policy. Ohio Sen. JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, has supported a national 15-week abortion ban.
“It’s not just an issue for women,” Emhoff said. “This is an issue for all of us.”
Since the high court’s ruling, many conservative states have banned abortion, while Democratic states have expanded access. Maine is in that latter group. Earlier this year, Mills and the Legislature protected providers from out-of-state legal action over Republican opposition.
The midterm elections two years ago were roiled by the high court’s abortion decision. Former Gov. Paul LePage, a Republican, blamed backlash on that issue for overshadowing the economic issues he campaigned on against Mills, who said during that campaign that she did not want abortion law changes but promptly advanced the viability change.
It is unclear whether the issue will be as potent this year. Americans trust Biden slightly more than Trump on abortion policy, according to a Pew Research Center poll conducted earlier this month before the president left the race. But Trump had much larger edges on immigration, the economy and foreign policy, giving Harris significant ground to make up.
Democrats are optimistic that she can do it. Biden has trailed Trump throughout this race, while a Reuters/Ipsos poll released Tuesday had Harris and Trump in a virtual dead heat. Harris’ campaign reported raising a record $81 million in the 24 hours after Biden’s Sunday announcement. In Maine, a campaign source said it signed up 400 more volunteers.
Later Wednesday afternoon, Emhoff was scheduled to attend a Harris campaign kickoff at a Portland office before heading to a Maine Democratic Party fundraiser in Falmouth that had been scheduled ahead of Biden’s withdrawal from the race.
The vice president’s husband was on friendly turf in the most liberal part of Maine’s 1st Congressional District. Trump twice won the rural 2nd District, which is playing host to a nationally targeted race between U.S. Rep. Jared Golden, a Democrat, and state Rep. Austin Theriault, R-Fort Kent.
Recent polls have shown that Trump is threatening Democrats in Maine, which has not been won by a Republican presidential candidate since 1988. Two public polls conducted earlier this year found Trump either ahead of or close to Biden statewide, and Mills reportedly told Biden on a call with governors that Democrats were worried about his standing here.
