Washington, (APP – UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News – 30th Nov, 2024) For months US Vice President Kamala Harris was laser-focused on one potentially career-defining, history-making goal — becoming the first woman entrusted with the keys to the White House.
But defeat to Donald Trump in November’s election stripped the Democrat of a place in the pantheon of US presidents, and left America wondering what’s next for a politician whose meteoric rise has come crashing to an abrupt halt.
After spending a few days in Hawaii following the disappointment of November 5, the 60-year-old former prosecutor has begun lifting the veil on her future ambitions.
“I am staying in the fight,” she declared during a call with party donors, without elaborating on how that might look.
Washington is abuzz with speculation over Harris’s next move, with some commentators predicting a bid for the governor’s mansion in her home state of California when Gavin Newsom vacates the premises in 2026.
In the United States, governorships are prestige positions, since many states are the size of countries — California’s economy would be the world’s fifth largest — and the men and women who run them act as quasi-presidents.
A full term or two governing California — which has only ever been led by white men — would be a fitting culmination to a trailblazing career in which Harris has shattered multiple glass ceilings.
She has longstanding relationships with local officialdom and much of the infrastructure already in place, as it was only seven years ago that she left the California attorney general’s office to become a US senator.
But leading the country’s most populous state would also give Harris “an enormous platform” to reassert herself as a political heavyweight on the national stage, notes political scientist Julian Zelizer, a professor at Princeton University.
