Delegates to the Democratic National Convention support the party moving forward swiftly to nominate Kamala Harris as their presidential candidate, rather than going through a prolonged and potentially divisive debate, according to interviews conducted by The New York Times.
Times reporters spoke with more than 250 delegates across the country this week, before Ms. Harris announced that she had collected enough delegate pledges to become her party’s presumptive nominee. The conversations showed that the party loyalists whose votes will determine the nomination overwhelmingly described the vice president as the strongest candidate the party has to run against former President Donald J. Trump.
“Kamala Harris puts us in a much better position to be able to compete, up and down the line, and makes this a much more winnable race,” said John Hendrick, a delegate from Leon County, Fla.
As Ms. Harris turns her attention to selecting a running mate, the interviews show no clear consensus among this group of party insiders over whom she should pick: 16 percent of respondents said it should be Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania, and 11 percent said Mark Kelly, the senator from Arizona. About 28 percent of respondents said they did not know whom the selection should be, or they did not respond to the question.
Reporters interviewed more than 250 delegates from 34 states and Puerto Rico. They included schoolteachers active in the local Democratic Party and statewide elected officials. The conversations took place as party leaders coalesced around Ms. Harris, but some delegates said they were frustrated with the lack of competition, and had concerns about Ms. Harris’s positions on issues like the Middle East conflict.
“It’s real clear there is a full-court press up and down the party structure,” said Bert Dame, an uncommitted delegate from Hawaii. “And if it can be done through cajoling, they’ll do that. And if they twist arms, they’ll do that.”
But the dissenters appear to be in the minority: 20 percent of respondents said they would have preferred a more competitive process, compared with 80 percent who supported moving ahead to the general election.
The interviews suggest a sense of relief for party leaders after months of tumult over whether Mr. Biden should stay in the race. Nearly three-quarters of respondents said Ms. Harris had the best chance of beating Mr. Trump of any Democrat in the field; Mr. Biden had told associates that he was reluctant to step aside out of concern that Ms. Harris could not defeat Mr. Trump.
That said, the burst of Democratic enthusiasm — and the perception among these delegates about her strengths as a candidate — does not reflect national and swing state polls, which have found that she is viewed unfavorably by many voters and that she trails Mr. Trump in swing states.
Some delegates said they worried that a Black woman would have trouble winning support in some of the swing states.
“There are prejudices that are still held by so many people — people who won’t even give her a chance simply because she is a Black woman,” said Raumesh Akbari, a state senator and a delegate from Tennessee.
The delegates make up a distinct niche of Democrats: they are, for the most part, active in local politics — many of them are elected officials — and they were picked to go to the party’s national convention, which will be held in Chicago next month, because of their loyalty to the party and its presidential ticket, which at the time consisted of Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris. The group’s support for Mr. Biden appears to have been transferred to Ms. Harris: 86 percent of the delegates interviewed said Ms. Harris was their first choice to be the Democrats presidential nominee.
Even in this group of Democrats who had been among Mr. Biden’s most loyal supporters, concerns about his strengths as a candidate against Mr. Trump were on display: 68 percent of the respondents said he did the right thing in stepping aside on Sunday, compared with just 11 percent who said he should have remained the nominee.
“It’s what’s necessary because we need to ensure continuity in the White House, and I think Kamala Harris is the one who can pick up the torch for the next four years,” said Daniel Mulieri, a delegate from Florida.
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