Vice President Kamala Harris will be in and out of Los Angeles Friday as she makes campaign stops in Las Vegas, Utah and Southern California a day after a pivotal debate in the race for president.
Harris, who has been in LA all week, is expected to fly from Los Angeles International Airport Friday morning to Las Vegas just hours after President Biden’s shaky debate performance against former President Trump in Georgia. Harris will speak at a campaign event in Las Vegas at midday before flying to Utah for another campaign event Friday afternoon in Park City, Utah.
Harris, a former U.S. Senator and California attorney general, is scheduled to return to Los Angeles for another campaign event Friday evening. Details about the Los Angeles event were not immediately available.
Harris has a home in Los Angeles’ Brentwood community. She arrived in Los Angeles Monday for a political event Wednesday in the San Gabriel Valley community of Bradbury.
After the Thursday night debate, Harris acknowledged that 81-year-old President Biden, who at times appeared to stumble over his words and lose his train of thought, had a “slow start,” but insisted that he finished strong.
“It was a slow start. That’s obvious to everyone. I’m not going to debate that point,” Harris said in an interview on CNN following the debate. “I’m talking about the choice for November. I’m talking about one of the most important elections in our collective lifetime.”
California voters expressed their thoughts and impressions after tuning in to the presidential debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump. Macy Jenkins reports for the NBC4 News at 11 p.m. on Thursday, June 27, 2024.
She conceded that Biden had an uneven performance, but said voters will need to judge Biden on his performance in office, not just in one debate.
“The Joe Biden that I work with every day is someone who, as I have said, has performed in a way that has been about bringing people into the Oval Office, Republicans and Democrats, to compromise in a way that is extraordinary these days,” she told CNN.
Harris will campaign Friday for Biden in the shadow of a debate that marked a turning point in the campaign with significant ramifications. NBC4 political contributor Fernando Guerra said there will likely be pressure on Biden in the weeks to come to bow out of the presidential race.
“That was the worst performance in presidential debate history, full stop. There’s not even a close second,” said NBC4 political contributor Fernando Guerra, of Loyola Marymount University. “This is going to be the most pivotal event in the entire campaign. It was horrible. There’s no denying it.”
After the debate, some Democratic strategists, elected officials and opinion-makers openly called for Biden to drop out, but party rules make it difficult to replace a candidate after the nominating process without their consent. Biden has already handily won the number of delegates required for the party’s nomination.
“What are the options? He has all the delegates, so there’s nothing to keep him from being nominated if he wants to be nominated,” Guerra said. “Only he can decide, given where we are, right now.”
There is no mechanism in place to chose a successor if the nominee withdraws from the race. Biden has previously sworn off such a decision.
Both Trump and Biden agreed to a second debate in September.