Vice President Kamala Harris has celebrated securing enough delegate endorsements to win the Democratic presidential nomination.
“Tonight, I am proud to have secured the broad support needed to become our party’s nominee, and as a daughter of California, I am proud that my home state’s delegation helped put our campaign over the top. I look forward to formally accepting the nomination soon,” she wrote in a statement sent by her campaign.
Harris pledged to bring the fight to Donald Trump.
“Over the next few months, I will be traveling across the country talking to Americans about everything that is on the line. I fully intend to unite our party, unite our nation, and defeat Donald Trump in November,” she said ahead of her first campaign rally for her new bid to beat the former president.
The House Republican campaign arm is developing a targeted plan of attack to pin specific pieces of Vice President Kamala Harris’ record against Democrats running in competitive House races as Harris marches toward the Democratic nomination.
The framing of GOP attacks on down-ballot Democrats are starting to take shape even though Harris is still not officially the Democratic presidential nominee, as the GOP campaign arm looks to quickly adjust their message and maintain their goal of keeping control of the House. The plan, which is still evolving, is to continue to tie Harris to what they see as failed policies of the Biden administration while also resurfacing some of her positions from her 2019 presidential run.
“It’s the Harris-Biden ticket,” GOP Rep. Tony Gonzales of Texas told CNN. “His failures are her failures.”
In key swing districts in Arizona and New Mexico, the GOP campaign arm plans to hammer home Harris’ efforts to tackle root causes of migration from Central America as Republicans look to make border crossings and mass migrations a top campaign issue. Republicans have long dubbed Harris the “border czar,” and one GOP strategist said to expect Republicans to tie down-ballot Democrats to that title even more.
“The unique problem with picking her is she can’t run away from any of that,” GOP Rep. Kelly Armstrong of North Dakota told CNN.
The White House has rejected the “border czar” title, arguing that her focus was on long-term fixes. In a key vote in February, Senate Republicans blocked a major bipartisan border deal and foreign aid package with assistance for Ukraine and Israel amid a torrent of attacks on the bill by former President Donald Trump and top House Republicans.
