Congressional race could head for recount as Yassamin Ansari leads Raquel Terán by 67 votes as of yesterday
The Democratic primary in Arizona’s third congressional district still remains too close to call and could be headed for a recount.
Former Phoenix city council member Yassamin Ansari led former state lawmaker Raquel Terán by 67 votes with nearly 44,000 ballots counted as of Saturday evening.
Continue reading...Doug Emhoff and Chasten Buttigieg’s success spurred talk about transportation secretary’s veepstakes chances
While Kamala Harris cleared her campaign diary this weekend to finalize her choice of running mate ahead of a swing-state presidential campaign blitz next week, political spouses were hard at work.
The vice-president’s husband, Doug Emhoff, and Chasten Buttigieg, husband of the US transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg – a potential running mate for Harris at the top of November’s Democratic ticket whose candidacy has been strengthening in recent days – were on New York’s Fire Island on Friday for a sold-out event that raised $321,000.
Continue reading...Hullabaloo over clip posted by Cherelle L Parker dispersed when it emerged it was in support of Josh Shapiro and not an announcement
A political and media “firestorm” broke out briefly in Philadelphia on Friday over whether the city’s mayor had published a tweet and video mistakenly revealing that Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania, was Kamala Harris’s eagerly awaited vice-presidential pick.
Heralding a “scoop”, Ernest Owens, a reporter for outlets including Philadelphia Magazine, said: “Philly political sources have told me that a staffer connected with Mayor Cherelle Parker’s team accidentally posted the video today.
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Josh Shapiro, the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, is widely speculated to be among Kamala Harris’s vice-presidential finalists.
Martin Pengelly explores Shapiro’s background for the Guardian:
July was the best grassroots fundraising month in presidential history.
Team Harris raised more across grassroots channels in the four days following President Biden’s endorsement of Vice-President Harris than Trump’s big donor-reliant operation raised in the entire month.
More than 3 million donors made over 4.2m contributions – with more than 2 million donors making their first donation this cycle.
This month, 94% of all our donations were under $200, and teachers and nurses continue to be among the most common donor occupations.
Compared with June, we saw more than 10 times the number of gen Z donors, and more than eight times the number of millennial donors.
Sixty per cent of all donors in July were women.
Coalition groups that organized calls since launch – like Black Women for Harris, Latinas for Harris, and White Dudes for Harris – raised more than $20m for Team Harris.
Continue reading...Vice-president ‘honored’ to be nominee after securing delegate votes – but nomination not official until Monday
Kamala Harris said on Friday she was “honored” to have secured enough votes from delegates to become the Democratic presidential nominee, making her the first Black woman and person of south Asian heritage to lead a major party ticket.
Jaime Harrison, chair of the Democratic National Committee, announced that the vice-president had earned the majority of delegates’ votes to become the party’s nominee to challenge Donald Trump in November, though her nomination would not be official until Monday, the end of the virtual roll-call vote.
Continue reading...Vice-president’s fundraising haul dwarfed Trump’s $138.7m with polls indicating a tight contest in battleground states
Kamala Harris’s campaign said on Friday it raised $310m in July, the latest dramatic illustration of a US presidential race polls show has transformed from an apparent romp to victory by Donald Trump into a neck-and-neck race in battleground states, though Trump retains a narrow lead.
Harris doubled Trump’s July fundraising haul of $138.7m, which in any normal year would be an impressive result, boosted by the assassination attempt he survived in Pennsylvania and by the Republican convention in Milwaukee.
Continue reading...Ex-president says he will travel back to Butler where assassination attempt took place; White House condemns Trump after he questions Harris’s racial identity at NABJ event
Journalists at the annual conference of the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) began trickling in to the Hilton hotel in downtown Chicago this morning for a 12pm CT/1pm ET panel – featuring Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
He will be quizzed by the prominent political reporters Kadia Goba of Semafor, Rachel Scott of ABC News and Harris Faulkner of Fox News.
Continue reading...Far-right firebrand to face off against Democrat Ruben Gallego for US Senate seat vacated by Kyrsten Sinema
Kari Lake, the far-right firebrand and favorite of Donald Trump, has won Arizona’s Republican Senate primary.
The Associated Press projected the race at 8.44pm Arizona time on Tuesday night. Lake rose to prominence as a gubernatorial candidate in 2022, when she refused to concede the race to her Democratic challenger Katie Hobbs.
Continue reading...Zoom call – with pets included – organized as riposte to comments made by JD Vance about ‘childless cat ladies’
A group of pet lovers and self-described “cat ladies” came together for the latest in a series of Zoom calls in support of Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign. The Tuesday evening call was hosted by Christine Pelosi, a political consultant and the daughter of Nancy Pelosi, and Nikki Fried, the chair of the Florida Democratic party.
The call was not organized around racial and ethnic identity, but as a rebuff to comments made in 2021 by JD Vance, Donald Trump’s running mate, who told the then Fox News host Tucker Carlson that the US was being run by Democrats, corporate oligarchs and “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too”.
Continue reading...VP touts prosecution record to cheering crowd after state leaders including Stacey Abrams take stage to show support
Three weeks ago, the political commentariat was writing off Georgia and talking of narrow pathways for Joe Biden to hold the White House. Georgia was a desert. Tuesday evening, an Atlanta crowd greeted Kamala Harris like she backed up a truck full of sweet tea to that desert.
It’s probably too early – nine days since the president’s withdrawal and the vice-president’s ascension – to know if sentiment in Georgia had shifted enough to justify jubilation. But the crowd in Atlanta treated the new presumptive presidential nominee as a reason to celebrate after months of her quieter campaigning in the city as the vice-presidential nominee.
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Kamala Harris’s campaign has announced a $50m advertising blitz ahead of the Democratic national convention next month with a television ad that portrays the presumptive Democratic nominee as “fearless”.
The 60-second ad will be the first in a series of paid media efforts ahead of the convention, which begins 19 August in Chicago.
We believe in a future where every person has the opportunity not just to get by, but to get ahead. Where every senior can retire with dignity. But Donald Trump wants to take our country backward. To give tax breaks to billionaires and big corporations and end the Affordable Care Act. But we are not going back.
Continue reading...Jeff Bridges, Mark Hamill, Mark Ruffalo and contenders for Harris’s VP pick among 190,000 participants in Zoom call
A Zoom call meant to rally “white dudes” in support of vice-president Kamala Harris’s run for the White House raised more than $4m from about 190,000 participants, including numerous celebrities, according to the presumptive Democratic nominee’s campaign.
Guests on the call not only included contenders for Harris’s vice-presidential running mate: the Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, the Illinois governor, JB Pritzker, and the US transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg. They also included the actors Jeff Bridges – famous for portraying the Dude in The Big Lebowski – and Mark Hamill, who secured a $50,000 donation during the call by delivering his renowned Star Wars line: “I’m Luke Skywalker. I’m here to rescue you.”
Continue reading...Former president told Christian supporters on Friday ‘it’ll be fixed’ in four years if he wins 2024 election
Democrats have expressed outrage after Donald Trump told a group of Christian supporters on Friday that if he wins the presidency in November, they would never need to vote again.
“Christians, get out and vote, just this time,” the former president and current presidential nominee told the crowd at at Turning Point Action’s Believers’ Summit on Friday. “You won’t have to do it any more. Four more years, you know what? It’ll be fixed, it’ll be fine, you won’t have to vote any more, my beautiful Christians.”
Continue reading...Tactic calibrated to resonate with young and independent voters who, polls show, are now more engaged with election
US Democrats have spent recent days trying out a relatively new attack line on Donald Trump: that he is weird. The tactic is almost certainly calibrated to resonate with young and independent voters who, polls show, are moving from marked disinterest in the now-dropped matchup between Joe Biden and his presidential predecessor to engagement in the 100-day contest between Trump and Kamala Harris.
In a press release Thursday, vice-president and presumptive Democratic nominee Kamala Harris issued a list of the main takeaways of what Trump had given the American people. “Is Donald Trump OK?” the X message said. The seventh of nine entries was: “Trump is old and quite weird?”
Continue reading...Pramila Jayapal, progressive Seattle representative, says of ‘undeniable’ enthusiasm: ‘I have not seen anything like this’
Kamala Harris pledged to earn the votes of young people this election, as the vice-president and newly elevated presumptive Democratic nominee rides a gen Z-powered wave of online “Kamalove” .
In a virtual address to attendees of a two-day summit in Atlanta, hosted by the liberal gen Z-led organization Voters of Tomorrow, Harris said she had been elected the first female vice-president of the United States “because young voters showed up” in 2020. She touted “historic progress” made by the Biden-Harris administration on combating gun violence and climate change, all of which she said was again “at stake this November”.
Continue reading...Over 160,000 attendees in a key demographic ‘answered the call’ on Thursday, with nearly $8.5m raised for Harris
Following the success of a virtual call to mobilize Black women voters for Kamala Harris, a similar event with more than 160,000 attendees was held on Thursday aimed at white women, and appeared to break records.
White women will be a key demographic for the Democrats to win over this election.
Continue reading...Republican still mostly ahead in swing states but data suggests presumptive Democratic nominee gaining ground
A spate of opinion polls carried out since Joe Biden abandoned his presidential campaign last Sunday show Vice-President Kamala Harris closing the gap on Donald Trump but still narrowly trailing in a tight race.
While still often narrowly behind, the ability of Harris, now the presumptive Democratic nominee, to gain ground on her Republican opponent suggests her elevation to the top of the ticket has reset the presidential race, pollsters say, especially after weeks of plummeting Democratic poll numbers under Biden.
Continue reading...Former president’s endorsement means US vice-president has won backing of all the party’s high-profile figures
Barack Obama has endorsed Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee for US president, meaning the vice-president has now won the backing of all the party’s politically active high-profile figures for her White House bid.
The former president had conspicuously withheld his endorsement in the immediate aftermath of Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw from the campaign, and was initially believed to favour an open nominating contest at next month’s Democratic national convention in Chicago.
Continue reading...Netanyahu meets Biden to discuss end to nine-month war in Gaza and has separate meeting with Kamala Harris
White House officials said Israel and Hamas were “closer now than we’ve been before” to reaching a ceasefire deal as Benjamin Netanyahu met Joe Biden on Thursday to discuss an end to the nine-month conflict in Gaza.
The talks at the White House came amid unprecedented political turmoil in the US and domestic pressure on the Israeli prime minster to rescue the dozens of hostages still being held captive after Hamas’s 7 October attack. Netanyahu also met the US vice-president, Kamala Harris, who is likely to replace Biden as the Democratic candidate for November’s election.
Continue reading...This blog has now closed. You can read our full report on Kamala Harris’ meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu here
The Harris for President campaign has launched its first official video, less than a week after US President Joe Biden announced he was dropping out of the race.
The ad caps a week during which Harris also broke funding records and quickly clinched enough delegate support to become the presumptive nominee in an election that is now just over 100 days away.
Continue reading...