Former Vice President Kamala Harris has re-emerged as one of the Democratic Party’s most active voices heading into the 2026 midterms, ramping up a national schedule of fundraisers, endorsements, and public appearances after more than a year of measured silence following her November 2024 election defeat.
Harris, 61, has spent the past several months on a national book tour promoting her memoir 107 Days, which chronicles her sprint-like presidential campaign after President Joe Biden’s late withdrawal from the race. The six-month tour put her in front of dozens of audiences across the country — from California to Mississippi — and fueled ongoing speculation about a potential third presidential run in 2028.
Her return to the political spotlight has been methodical. Her first major speech since leaving office came in April 2025 at an Emerge America gala in San Francisco, where she accused President Donald Trump of engineering “the greatest man-made economic crisis in modern presidential history” and warned that constitutional checks and balances “have begun to buckle.” She called his tariff policies “reckless” and said they threatened to push the country into recession.
Since then, Harris has accelerated her public profile considerably. In January 2026, she spoke at the annual MLK Interfaith Breakfast in Chicago, urging attendees to “bear down” and resist the Trump administration’s agenda. “They may want us to be afraid, to be divided, to be silent,” she told the crowd. “But we won’t give them that satisfaction.”
In March 2026, Harris addressed a packed crowd in Madison, Wisconsin, one day after the United States and Israel began launching strikes against Iran, sharply criticizing Trump’s decision. “In the last 48 hours Donald Trump has dragged America into a war that we don’t want,” she told the audience at the Orpheum Theater, adding that media reports indicated three American soldiers had died in what she called an “unauthorized war.”
Now Harris is taking her midterm push to the South. CNN reported this week that Harris is scheduled to appear at fundraisers for the North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia state Democratic parties during the week of April 13, followed by a keynote address at the Arkansas Democrats’ annual Fisher Shackelford Dinner in Little Rock on April 25. Sources familiar with her plans say conversations about additional stops through the summer and fall are already underway.
The Arkansas appearance is particularly significant — it will mark her first formal keynote speech since her 2024 election loss to Trump. It also falls on the same night as the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, which Trump has said he plans to attend.
Beyond the Southern swing, Harris has been busy on the endorsement and organizing front. She has recorded ads for the Democratic National Committee and for Virginia Democrats ahead of a ballot proposition scheduled for April 21. She endorsed former aide Dan Koh in his Massachusetts congressional primary, backed Helena Moreno and Zohran Mamdani in the New Orleans and New York City mayoral races, and has been in contact with several recent primary winners including James Talarico in Texas, Juliana Stratton in Illinois, and Scott Colom in Mississippi.
On the digital organizing front, Harris revived her former “Kamala HQ” social account as a platform called “Headquarters,” describing it as a centralized hub for Democratic messaging, grassroots activity, and supporter engagement ahead of the midterms. The move stopped short of a formal campaign announcement, but marked her most visible organizing push since the 2024 presidential race.
Harris has ruled out running for California governor in 2026. “For now, my leadership — and public service — will not be in elected office,” she said when announcing that decision in July 2025, while leaving the door open to a future presidential campaign. A March 2026 survey by the Public Sentiment Institute found Harris in second place among Democratic primary voters for 2028, with 16.7 percent support, behind former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg at 18.4 percent.
Harris has not formally declared any plans for 2028, but her expanding schedule, Southern outreach, and continued fundraising activity signal that she intends to remain a central figure in Democratic politics through the midterm cycle and beyond.
