Former VP Kamala Harris ‘thinking about’ third bid for presidency as she stops in SC for book tour

COLUMBIA — During a trip to South Carolina this week, former Vice President Kamala Harris reiterated that she’s “thinking about” a third bid for the presidency, bashed her former opponent’s foreign policy and stressed the importance of staying hopeful.

Harris’ national tour for her book, “107 Days,” included a stop Thursday at the Township Auditorium in Columbia, where she was interviewed on stage by Kardea Brown, a Charleston chef and host of the popular Food Network cooking show “Delicious Miss Brown.”

The former vice president told the crowd that she was watching Brown on TV in July 2024 when, as the first chapter of her book details, then-President Joe Biden called Harris to say he was ending his re-election campaign. Her memoir’s title reflects the length of her own bid for president that followed.

After its release last September, “107 Days” made headlines for Harris’ new willingness to criticize Biden and her telling for why she chose Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate.

In her book, the vice president attributes her loss to President Donald Trump to the short amount of time she had to campaign as the nominee.

But in front of a couple thousand people Thursday in a state where both parties pride themselves in picking presidents, Harris didn’t talk about her unsuccessful 2024 campaign or her potential plans to run in 2028. Instead, she primarily bashed Trump, saying his tariff policies and war with Iran make America look “unreliable,” unfriendly towards its allies abroad, and unwilling to follow international law.

“We’re now losing influence,” she told the Southern Kitchen chef. “Our ability to walk around the world and talk about what’s in the best interest of human rights has now been deteriorated.”

She often returned to the importance of hope, encouraging people who felt discouraged or powerless to vote and help out their neighbors, including by volunteering at food banks or helping a single parent with a grocery run.

That message resonated with Dianne Palmer, of Irmo, who said after the talk that she would “absolutely” support a Harris bid for president in 2028.

“I’m just happy that she’s just as vibrant and positive as she always has been,” said Palmer, 65, special assistant to the University of South Carolina women’s basketball head coach. “She has never been one that has been angry or bitter or anything like that. She’s always been this positive image of how things can be.”

Dorothy Cuttino, 71, a Columbia teacher, said Harris needs to campaign more with former President Barack Obama if she runs for president again. “I pray and trust in the Lord that she will run,” Cuttino said.

Harris sparked a new round of debate last week over her chances in 2028 when she gave arguably her clearest indication yet that she could launch another White House bid.

She was one of several potential 2028 contenders to speak at the National Action Network, a civil rights organization founded by the Rev. Al Sharpton. When asked directly about a 2028 bid, Harris told Sharpton: “I’m thinking about it.”

Harris said the same thing at a downtown Greenville restaurant Wednesday before a fundraiser for the state Democratic Party, where she told reporters she’s thinking about running but hadn’t made a decision yet.

Some within her party are less convinced than Thursday’s crowd in the state capital that Harris should run again. She suffered an overwhelming defeat to Trump in 2024, losing the Electoral College 226-312 and becoming the first Democrat to also lose the popular vote since 2004, when George W. Bush defeated John Kerry.

Her campaign also ended more than $20 million in debt despite raising an astounding $1.5 billion over 15 weeks.

Harris launched her first bid for president in 2019, while a U.S. senator from California. But the former state attorney general dropped out of the presidential contest by year’s end, ahead of South Carolina’s first-in-the-South presidential primary. After Biden’s come-from-behind win in the Palmetto State, which ultimately catapulted him to the White House, he picked Harris as his running mate.

That decision made Harris the first Black person, the first woman, and the first person of South Asian descent to be vice president of the United States. Her mother is from India, and her father is from Jamaica.

While she wasn’t the 2024 nominee until July, Harris campaigned for months before that as a surrogate for Biden as their ticket sought re-election.

That included three trips in a month to South Carolina ahead of its February presidential primary, that year’s first in the nation recognized by the national Democratic Party. The second of those stops was at King Day at the Dome, where Harris was keynote speaker for the annual event on Statehouse grounds on the holiday honoring the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

Harris’ visit to South Carolina this week caused some minor drama at the Statehouse, after the Republican chairman of the state House’s budget-writing committee was accused of co-sponsoring a resolution to honor her and “welcome her arrival to the Palmetto State” during her book tour. The resolution didn’t pass. On Thursday, the House agreed to send it back to the committee that advanced it.

But the accidental listing of Ways and Means Chairman Bruce Bannister, of Greenville, as a co-sponsor prompted a backlash on social media led by Republicans in the hardline Freedom Caucus.

Democrat Rep. Justin Bamberg of Bamberg, who accidentally put his initials on Bannister’s line on the sign-up form, leapt to his defense, writing on X that Bannister was “serving a bid for a Republican crime he ain’t commit.”

In another post, he wrote, “Everybody pls chill out on him.”