Now that Joe Biden has stepped down, who might replace him as the Democratic presidential nominee?
As President Joe Biden announced Sunday his stunning decision to step aside for re-election in November’s race, Vice President Kamala Harris has emerged as the favorite to run. But polling showed Gavin Newsom and a host of others may have a shot.
While more Democratic voters have told pollsters they wold prefer Harris, her support isn’t overwhelming. The surveys suggest California Gov. Newsom, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear and others could become viable challengers.
“There’s no slam dunk candidate,” said Chris Jackson, senior vice president of Ipsos, which polled voters on alternatives last week.
Shortly after Biden dropped out of the race Sunday, he announced his support for Harris: “My very first decision as the party nominee in 2020 was to pick Kamala Harris as my Vice President. And it’s been the best decision I’ve made,” he said in a statement on X. “Today I want to offer my full support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee of our party this year.”
Since his disastrous showing in the June 27 debate against Donald Trump, Biden has slipped somewhat in most polls. Trump is ahead by as many as 8 points in some post-debate polls, though he and Biden are tied among registered voters in an Ipsos survey taken at the beginning of the month.
While the most-mentioned alternatives continue to vow support for Biden, others are calling for him to leave.
The alternative candidates would run close races, polls suggest. Harris, 59, the former California attorney general and senator, trailed Trump by one percentage point in an Ipsos July 1-2 survey of registered voters, similar to her standing in the June 28-30 CNN/SRSS survey
Newsom, 56, had the next best showing of any Democrat in the Ipsos poll with 39% to Trump’s 42%.
In another post-debate survey, about two in three Democrats saw Harris as qualified to be president, according to an Economist/YouGov poll. YouGov found 31% of registered Democratic voters said they’d prefer Harris over Newsom, who was cited by 17%.
Kamala Harris and Gavin Newsom
Newsom and Harris face a different challenge that the other potential alternative candidates. They’re better known, meaning more people have formed opinions of them both good and bad.
Republicans have been demonizing both for years. Whitmer and the other potential candidates, on the other hand, still have room to be defined in the public eye.
In the Ipsos poll, about half of registered voters said they never heard of Whitmer. Seventy-one percent never heard of Beshear and 75% were unfamiliar with Pritzker. Newsom, who has tried for the last year to promote himself as a national figure, was unknown to 29%. But nearly everyone knew Harris.
“Name recognition is a significant factor for all potential Democratic candidates at this stage, effective advertising could change that quickly,” said Spencer Kimball, polling director at Emerson College, which conducts state and national surveys.
The Democratic hopefuls
Here are some of the potential players and their prospects:
▪ Pritzker. The Illinois governor, 59, now in his second term, will be in the spotlight next month when Democrats hold their convention in Chicago.
Still, it’s the swing states in play where Democrats are likely to turn their attention if the nomination process opens up, and Pritzker’s state is regarded as fairly safe Democratic territory. A Republican presidential candidate last won Illinois in 1988, and Biden won the state by 17 points in 2020.
▪ Josh Shapiro. The Pennsylvania governor, 51, got accolades for pushing to get Interstate 95 reopened two weeks after the road collapsed last year.
The highway is a major north-south East Coast highway connecting Baltimore, Philadelphia and other big cities. Shapiro, though, has only been in that office for a year and a half. He had been state attorney general from 2017 to 2023..
▪ Pete Buttigieg. The Secretary of Transportation, 42, sought the nomination four years ago and would start with both a network of supporters and know-how. But Buttagieg would also have to answer for air traffic, highway and other controversies during his tenure.
An Economist/YouGov post-debate poll had Buttagieg viewed favorably by 32% of registered voters, while 37% saw him unfavorably..
▪ Whitmer. The Michigan governor, 52, has jumped onto pundit radars because she’s won twice in a blue-collar swing state that is seen as crucial to anyone seeking the White House. Trump narrowly won Michigan in 2016, but lost it in 2020.
Whitmer became popular in Michigan for her insistence on fixing the state’s roads, and has been a rising national star. Whitmer gave the 2020 response to Trump’s State of the Union address from her daughter’s high school. She focused on infrastructure, education and health care.
Biden seriously considered her as his vice presidential running mate in 2020.
Whitmer also has a reputation for her toughness–she was the target of a foiled plot to kidnap her and overthrow the state government in 2020 by a paramilitary group.
▪ Beshear. The Kentucky governor, 46, has long tempted national Democrats. He’s won the governorship twice in a Republican-leaning state, a state whose GOP is led by national powerbroker Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader.
Beshear won his first term by narrowly defeating Republican incumbent Matt Bevin. Four years later, he topped Republican Daniel Cameron by 5 percentage points.
Kentucky last gave its electoral votes to a Democrat in 1996.
Being able to carry a swing state and have appeal in blue collar voters Southern states that for years have tilted Republican would make Beshear, Whitmer and maybe others more attractive. Democrats dominate California, where the party’s statewide candidates have not lost an election since 2006.
New Hampshire is another state in play, and Andrew Smith, director of the University of New Hampshire Survey Center, thought any small advantage could be crucial this year.
Remember, he said, “We’re talking about an election to be decided by a couple percentage points in key states.”
This story was originally published July 8, 2024 at 4:45 PM.
.jpg)