Representative Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker who played a critical role in making the case privately to President Biden that he should withdraw from the presidential race, on Monday formally endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to replace him as the party’s nominee.
“Today, it is with immense pride and limitless optimism for our country’s future that I endorse Vice President Kamala Harris for President of the United States,” Ms. Pelosi said in a statement. “My enthusiastic support for Kamala Harris for president is official, personal and political.”
Her announcement ended a brief but intense period of speculation about whether Ms. Pelosi, who wields considerable influence in the Democratic Party, would seek to orchestrate a competitive primary following Mr. Biden’s departure from the race.
Before he dropped out, Ms. Pelosi had recently told her colleagues in the California delegation privately that if Mr. Biden were to do so, she would favor such a process over an anointment of Ms. Harris. And she notably did not include any endorsement of the vice president in a statement she released on Sunday applauding Mr. Biden for his leadership and his decision to step aside.
Her full-throated endorsement on Monday came as the party was enthusiastically coalescing around Ms. Harris.
But the two top Democrats in Congress, Senator Chuck Schumer and Representative Hakeem Jeffries, still have yet to offer any endorsement of Ms. Harris, even as other Democratic lawmakers enthusiastically lined up behind her candidacy.
The thinking among those top congressional leaders, according to people briefed on the matter who insisted on anonymity in order to discuss a sensitive subject, is that for party leaders who hold great sway with members, an endorsement would make Ms. Harris’ nomination look more like a coronation than an organic unification of a newly-energized party. And there was no need to get in the way of the first good moment Democrats have enjoyed in weeks.
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