It’s one thing to be loathed as a politico. Being hated is something that you can work with. It’s a human passion, at least, and so long as it’s not 100 percent universal, it’s workable.
It’s far worse to be greeted with general indifference. Which is rather the problem with Kamala Harris and her latest political prospect, the California gubernatorial race.
According to a poll by Politico and the University of California, Berkeley’s Citrin Center released Tuesday, while Harris has long been considered the front-runner if she decides to run, a group of “policy influencers” chose “indifference” as the overriding emotion they’d have if the 2024 Democratic standard-bearer decided on a 2026 run for the Golden State governorship.
The influencer sample was generated from subscribers to various Politico publications that are California-centric and geared toward wonks, including the California Playbook, California Climate and Politico Pro. (No word on how many laid-off USAID employees were in it, but I digress.)
Those who responded in both samples — general voter and policy influencer — were asked to pick from a list of emotions they’d have regarding a Harris run for the governorship, including “joyful,” “mostly excited,” “indifferent,” “irritated,” “outraged,” and “hopeless.” They were also allowed to choose other and were able to select multiple categories.
“This group of in-the-know politicos was notably blasé about the prospect of a Gov. Harris, with 36 percent choosing ‘indifferent’ to describe how they’d feel about her hypothetical bid,” Politico’s report noted.
Things were better, albeit by a matter of degrees, when they looked at the registered voters.
“Among the state’s Democrats, there was a warm response to a Harris run, with 33 percent saying they felt ‘joyful’ about her possible candidacy and 41 percent feeling ‘mostly excited.’ The negative emotions hovered in the single digits, while roughly a quarter of Democrats said they were ‘indifferent,’” Politico reported.
“The registered Democratic voters are very enthusiastic about her,” said Jack Citrin, a UC Berkeley professor of political science.
“The ‘joyful’ number goes up, the ‘excited’ number goes up, and the ‘irritated’ and ‘outraged’ numbers go way down.”
As for the apathy of the insiders: “These people are not given to euphoria,” he said.
The issues she faced with insiders were also present among Republicans and independent voters, too, with the most popular responses among GOPers being “irritated” and “outraged” and 26 percent and 21 percent of independents saying they were “irritated” and “hopeless,” respectively, on a Harris candidacy.
What’s notable, too, is that Asian American and Latino voters were sour on Harris, with 19 percent of Latinos saying they felt “hopeless” about the run.
“It’s almost a surprising lack of enthusiasm,” Citrin said about the Latino vote. “But we know from the general election that Latino voters shifted as compared to 2020 or 2016 towards Trump.”
This is sort of the issue writ large with Harris, however: To the extent that she performs well in polls, it’s only by default.
Keep in mind, Harris is currently on top of the Democratic presidential primaries, too, to the extent that any sort of cohesive field of front-runners is shaping up. But, to what extent is that because she’s simply the choice of 2024?
In California, if she decided to run, the “consensus, even among Democratic candidates, was that Harris would be too commanding an opponent to take on,” Politico noted.
“Attorney General Rob Bonta, who opted not to run for the post, told POLITICO that Harris would be a ‘field-clearing’ candidate if she launched a campaign. Some declared candidates — including Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, a close Harris friend — have floated backup plans to supporters about running for a different office if Harris gets in.”
However, the field hasn’t cleared — and one adviser to Rick Caruso, who is looking toward a gubernatorial run, said the numbers show Harris has “a glass jaw.”
“If I were a rival Democrat, I look at those numbers, and I would say she’ll start in front, but she’s vulnerable to a campaign,” said Mike Murphy, a Republican strategist based out of Los Angeles. “So there’s plenty of time to move.”
As Murphy also noted, when Harris first ran for president during the 2020 cycle, “the buzz on her was better outside of California than it was in California. … She’s never been that popular in the California political high school.”
Well, now the buzz outside of California is just as bad as the vibe inside it — but, in both places, she’d still be the biggest-name candidate on the Democratic side. That was enough to get people in line during the presidential election, but her loss to Donald Trump is likely to hamper her 2028 chances. Even in her home state, however, people seem pretty meh on her.
You can do something with fear or loathing or outright hatred, inasmuch as there’s usually a counterbalancing base to be found who loves you. But as for indifference, that won’t inspire anything but another high-priced flameout. Even Democrats seem to be wondering: Can’t Kamala just go away at this point?