Vice President Kamala Harris on Monday made her first public appearance since President Biden dropped his re-election bid, praising Mr. Biden’s record as “unmatched in modern history” as she began an effort to reintroduce herself to Americans on her own terms.
Speaking at an event honoring college athletes at the White House, Ms. Harris talked about her friendship with Mr. Biden’s son Beau Biden, who died of brain cancer in 2015, and commended the president’s “deep love of our country.”
But she wasted no time in starting to build her new profile as the presumptive nominee and the new hope among Democrats for defeating former President Donald J. Trump. Ms. Harris received a flood of donations in the hours after Mr. Biden pulled out, began an effort to engage delegates and scooped up key endorsements.
In the three and a half months until Election Day, Ms. Harris still needs to define herself for the American people before Republicans do it for her. She also needs to quickly take over the campaign apparatus that Mr. Biden had spent more than a year building.
After the event at the White House on Monday, Ms. Harris was set to travel to Wilmington, Del., to say hello to staff members at what had been the Biden-Harris campaign headquarters.
“One day down,” Ms. Harris said in a social media post on Monday. “105 to go. Together, we’re going to win this.”
Ms. Harris spent more than 10 hours on the phone on Sunday at her residence to build support for her campaign, according to a person familiar with her schedule. She called more than 100 party leaders, members of Congress, governors and activists including labor leaders and civil rights advocates, the person said.
Stefanie Brown James, a co-founder of the Collective PAC, an organization that supports Black candidates at all levels of government, quoted the rapper Jay-Z when describing the current moment for Ms. Harris.
“‘Allow me to reintroduce myself,’” Ms. James said. “She has to in this moment define who she is, explain her record.”
But Ms. James also said Ms. Harris would need to form an effective message that used her work as a vice president and prosecutor to energize voters, something she failed to do during the 2020 campaign. Ms. Harris faced intense criticism from progressives during that campaign and felt torn about embracing her prosecutorial record.
But there were signs that this time around, Ms. Harris would lean into her work in law enforcement. In an indication of how her campaign planned to frame Ms. Harris’s positions, her staff began laying out her experience as a prosecutor and advocacy for abortion rights to party members and delegates, according to a document reviewed by The New York Times.
The talking points are meant to reassure delegates of Ms. Harris’s ability to harness enthusiasm with the “next generation” of party voters. At 59, she is notably younger than both Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump.
The document also reminds delegates of her experience as a district attorney in San Francisco and as the attorney general of California. “Her work as a prosecutor makes her the ultimate contrast to Trump, the convicted felon,” it says.
Mr. Trump, who has been targeting Ms. Harris for weeks, wasted little time in posting an ad against the vice president, accusing her of covering up Mr. Biden’s “obvious mental decline” and linking her to the president on issues like inflation and the border.
“Kamala knew Joe couldn’t do the job. So she did it,” the ad said, arguing that therefore, “Kamala owns this failed record.”
Ms. Harris’s aides have long felt she has the ability to connect to voters Mr. Biden may not be as effective at making inroads with. For the past year, her aides have counseled her to reach crucial voting blocs whose support for Mr. Biden has wavered, including Black men.
The renewed effort came as polls have shown Mr. Trump is making inroads with Black men across the country. Quentin James, co-founder of the Collective PAC, which promotes voter outreach in minority communities, planned to hold a call with other prominent Black male Democrats on Monday night to rally support for Ms. Harris.
Mark Buell, a prominent Democratic donor who worked as Ms. Harris’s finance chair during her campaign for district attorney of San Francisco, said donors in the vice president’s home state, California, were more energized on Monday than they had been in months.
“There is such a pent-up desire to beat Donald Trump as this threat to democracy,” Mr. Buell said. “Now having a place to really put your money for that fight is very important.”
The post Harris Steps Into the Spotlight, Reintroducing Herself on Her Own Terms appeared first on New York Times.
