Former Vice President Kamala Harris said she remains undecided about a 2028 presidential run as she campaigns for Democratic candidates across the country in the final week before the Nov. 3 midterm elections.
“I go back and forth. I honestly go back and forth,” Harris told CNN’s Edward-Isaac Dovere in an interview on Oct. 22 in Mississippi, when asked which way she was leaning.
“There’s so many factors.”
Harris, the Democrats’ 2024 presidential nominee, acknowledged she can only say she hasn’t made up her mind for so long. Asked whether that meant six months or a year, she said she didn’t know.
She said a run would not be about the primary fight itself.
“If I run, my motivation is not to beat other Democrats. It’s to actually do the job,” she said.
Harris said she feels compelled to keep working because she knows she can help, and that she can’t sit at home when there are problems she could help fix.
After the interview ended, Harris asked to add one more comment on the record, Dovere wrote.
“The American people want leaders who aren’t just occupied with looking in the mirror. They want leaders who are looking at the people, you know?” she said. “And they can tell the difference.”
Harris has spent the fall campaigning for Democratic candidates, with recent stops in Michigan and stops in Wisconsin and Georgia this week.
Not every Democrat on the ballot wants her help. Some candidates have indicated they don’t want her to campaign with them, but Harris said she doesn’t take it personally when asked about it.
“Oh, I want them to do whatever they need to do to win. I mean that sincerely,” she said.
She added that she has run for local, state, and national office, isn’t naive about campaigns, and respects whatever decisions candidates make to win.
Harris also declined to draw a line against candidates who have aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America.
Those include Angie Nixon, the Democratic Senate nominee in Florida, who joined the group as part of launching her campaign. Nixon is set to appear at one of Harris’s virtual events this week.
Nixon has said in various interviews that she is not a socialist, instead insisting that she is a capitalist who believes in strong regulation.
Asked how large a role the group should have in the party’s future, Harris said, “We are, as we say, a big tent, and I don’t think anybody should be kicked out.”
Harris spoke with CNN while campaigning for Scott Colom, the district attorney for Mississippi’s 16th Judicial District, who is challenging Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.).
At a rally at Colom’s hometown high school in Columbus, Harris told about 1,000 people she had traveled there “because indeed Mississippi matters.”
She called the Trump administration “the most callous, corrupt, and incompetent presidential administration” and urged the crowd to turn its anger into action.
The Cook Political Report has moved the race from “Solid Republican” to “Likely Republican,” and Senate Majority PAC has put $1.2 million into an ad backing Colom.
Polls taken between April and August showed Hyde-Smith with a single-digit lead.
Harris won 38 percent of the vote in Mississippi in the 2024 presidential election, while President Donald Trump took 60.9 percent.
Colom challenged Trump to a debate during the president’s scheduled campaign visit to Corinth, Mississippi, on Oct. 26, saying Hyde-Smith had not debated him.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee said Colom’s decision to campaign with Harris shows he is out of step with the state.
“Scott Colom is a Chuck Schumer-backed, George Soros-funded, transgender defender so out of touch with Mississippi that he is campaigning with Kamala Harris, who lost the state by 22 points,” NRSC regional press secretary Samantha Cantrell said in an emailed statement to The Epoch Times on Monday.
Harris isn’t the only Democrat weighing 2028 while campaigning for others.
Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), who also campaigned in Mississippi for Colom, told CNN he is considering a presidential run.
Other 2028 contenders for the Democratic nomination that have hit the campaign trail include Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, and former Ambassador Rahm Emanuel.
Jacki Thrapp contributed to this report.
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