UPDATE (07/30/2025): Of course, minutes after I posted this, Kamala Harris announced she would not run for governor in 2026. Oh well. The post is still worth a read, if I do say so myself.
Stop me if you’ve heard this before:
The sitting Vice President of the United States loses a close election for President, concedes gracefully, presides over the certification of the person who won the White House, heads home to California and decides to run for Governor in order to stay relevant and prepare for another Presidential bid.
It didn’t work out too well for Richard Nixon.
He lost the 1962 gubernatorial election to incumbent Edmund “Pat” Brown and then gave an angry, resentful and bitter press conference which seemingly ended his political career for good. Worse, having come up short in a second-successive high-profile election, he now had a reputation as a loser — and a sore one, at that. Nixon seemingly accepted his fate, famously telling the assembled press that “you won’t have Nixon to kick around any more, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference.”
Except, as we now know, Nixon was hardly finished as a politician. He went to Wall Street and worked as a lawyer, serving as public partner for a high-powered law firm that had fallen on hard times. Over the next few years, he used his firm gig to burnish his credentials as a lawyer and rehab his reputation. His firm also provided him with important advisers that played a big role in preparing him to run, successfully, in 1968.
But the fact remained that 1962 was a horrendous mistake, and a rare misstep from one of the savviest politicians of his era. Could Harris be about to make that same mistake?
Does She Want It?
This might seem like a stupid question, but it makes perfect sense when you think about Nixon’s 1962 campaign. Perhaps the biggest handicap he faced that year was that it was obvious to everyone that he didn’t really want to be governor. He felt he needed a political base to mount another White House run, and worried that being out of office would cause him to become irrelevant. He was getting lots of pressure from party bigwigs to make the run, although some presciently argued against running, telling Nixon that he was better suited for Washington, D.C. than Sacramento. Having spent his entire political career in D.C., Nixon was not as well-versed in state issues, and it showed on the campaign trail.
Nixon’s unfamiliarity with his home state hampered him and forced him to talk in vague generalities about cleaning up Sacramento without going into specifics. The press picked up on this and began questioning whether he actually knew anything about the state he sought to lead. Nixon even fell back on a tried-and-true tactic: accusing his opponent of being soft on communism. However, this only prompted more skeptical questions from reporters—something that annoyed Nixon greatly.
Victor Li, Nixon in New York: How Wall Street Helped Richard Nixon Win the White House.
At one point, Nixon gaffed and said he was running for “governor of the United States” — an innocent, albeit Freudian slip of the tongue that revealed the level of his ambivalence towards the job, at least in the eyes of many voters.
Unlike Nixon, Harris has been a state official, serving as Attorney General from 2011-2017. Before that, she had served in a variety of roles in local government, most notably being elected District Attorney for San Francisco in 2002. Harris is well acquainted with issues important to the state, having prioritized consumer protection, criminal justice reform and cybersecurity and privacy during her tenure as AG.
Moreover, if you believe the political press in California, Harris has long wanted to be governor. The Los Angeles Times wrote a story in 2014 saying that both Harris and then-lieutenant governor Gavin Newsom were eyeing the job, and the San Francisco Chronicle speculated that some deal or gentlemen’s agreement would have to be struck in order to avoid a nasty civil war between the state Democratic Party’s two biggest stars.
Ultimately, things worked out for the two of them. Longtime Senator Barbara Boxer retired in 2016, opening up a seat in California for the first time since 1992 (when Boxer, herself, won the seat held by Democrat Alan Cranston). Harris decided to run and was easily elected — in fact, she had more or less been treated as the incumbent-in-waiting throughout the entire race. Newsom then ran for governor in 2018 and won easily.
So if Harris decides to make the run for governor, she should make sure she sincerely wants it and isn’t just biding her time before making another run for President. Otherwise, it will show on the campaign trail and in her press coverage.
It’ll also be a miserable few years for her if she really is just using the governor’s mansion as a placeholder. Between the wildfires, earthquakes, rampant homelessness, income inequality and ICE raids (which will, no doubt, increase if she’s governor and Trump is still President), there will be a lot on her plate. I’m not saying she can’t handle it, but the question is will she want to?
Does She Need It?
As mentioned earlier, Nixon wanted to have a political base to allow him to run for president again. Back then, private citizens rarely won the White House — Eisenhower did it, but he had the advantage of being a popular national figure and war hero. Losing the gubernatorial race forced Nixon to get creative and carve out a new political base — this time from a Wall Street boardroom.
If her goal is, ultimately, to run for president again, then Harris does not need a political base in the form of an elected office. Suffice to say, things have changed a lot since Nixon’s era. Thanks to the 24-hour news cycle and social media, Harris can maintain her public profile without needing a title like Governor or Senator. Trump, Biden and Hillary Clinton were all nominated as private citizens, as were Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter and Nixon.
Plus, you can bet Trump and other Republicans will do their best to boost her profile and keep her name in the news. Since she’s already lost one presidential race, the GOP will see her as damaged goods and want her to run for President again, assuming that she’ll be an easy out (much like how they still talk about Hillary Clinton). They’ll, essentially, do the work for her.
Can She Win? Could She Lose?
It’s hard to believe, but during Nixon’s time, California was a solid Republican state. When Brown first won the governor’s mansion in 1958, defeating then-U.S. Senate Minority Leader William Knowland in a massive upset, he became only the second Democrat to win a gubernatorial election in California in the twentieth century. Meanwhile, Nixon had always had a comfortable time at the ballot box, winning his Senate race in 1950 by nearly 20 points and helping Eisenhower carry the state twice — both times by wide margins. As such, a race against Brown seemed like a winnable one for Nixon.
Harris is in a similar position. Democrats have dominated the state for decades now. The last Republican to be elected governor was Arnold Schwarzenegger, and it’s safe to say that the Governator (Conan the Politician? California Cop? The Guy Who Benefited From A Total Recall of Gary Davis? Nah, Governator was the best one) was a special circumstance. Since he said “Hasta la vista” to the governor’s mansion, no Republican candidate has come close to winning a statewide race. In fact, ever since California adopted its “top two” primary rule in 2010 where the top two candidates in the field, regardless of party affiliation, move on to the general election, there have been several high-profile races, including Harris’ 2016 Senate election, that featured two Democrats facing off in November.
With that in mind, the Democratic field for governor in 2026 is already bursting with big names and ambitious politicos who have been waiting a long time to move up. There’s Xavier Becerra, Harris’ successor as Attorney General and Secretary of Health and Human Services under Biden. There’s Antonio Villaraigosa, former L.A. mayor who finished third in the 2018 primary for governor. There’s Katie Porter, a progressive darling and former U.S. Representative who finished third in the U.S. Senate primary in 2024. There’s Eleni Kounalakis, the current lieutenant governor who has said she’d step aside if Harris runs.
Harris, obviously, has more name recognition and a higher profile than any of those potential rivals. She would be heavily favored in a primary — although the fact that only Kounalakis has said she would withdraw if Harris decided to run and several have explicitly said they would stay in no matter what could speak to the former VP’s diminished standing in her own party.
Could they force Harris into a tough race? Nixon faced an unexpectedly difficult primary against a candidate that, at first glance, seemed like he would present no problems.
Nixon had essentially cleared the field when he entered the Republican primary as none of his rivals in the GOP dared tangle with the former vice president. The only candidate of any significance was Joe Shell, a state assembly member and former captain of the University of Southern California football team. Compared to Nixon, Shell was a nobody (initial polls in 1962 had him at 2 percent), and his intemperate, outspoken nature made him borderline unelectable as a statewide candidate. Indeed, he wouldn’t have been out of place in the modern-day Tea Party. For instance, during the gubernatorial race, he told Time magazine: “I’ve gotten sick and tired of calling people liberals when they’re basically socialists.”
Shell, however, had tapped into the growing divide between conservative and moderate Republicans and slowly chipped away at Nixon’s lead. He had even picked up some endorsements, including one from the ultraconservative John Birch Society (Nixon, who was running as a self-proclaimed “progressive conservative,” had disavowed and denounced the Birchers as a bunch of “kooks and nuts”), and had financial support from A. C. “Cy” Ruble, former chairman of Union Oil Company of California. When it came time for the primary, Shell shocked the state, taking one-third of the vote—a strong showing against the two-term vice president who had never lost an election in his home state other than a student body president race when he was in high school. After a futile attempt to wring concessions out of Nixon in exchange for an endorsement, Shell ultimately backed Nixon, but in such a tepid and unenthusiastic manner that his supporters on the right flank immediately caught on.
Li, Nixon in New York
There have been some skirmishes between left and center in various Democratic primaries since 2024. In New York, self-proclaimed Democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani shocked the political world by winning the Democratic nomination, beating a field that included scandal-plagued ex-governor Andrew Cuomo. In Pittsburgh, the opposite happened, as progressive incumbent Ed Gainey was beaten in the Democratic primary by moderate challenger Corey O’Connor (son of former mayor Bob O’Connor). Meanwhile, in New Jersey, moderate candidate Mikie Sherrill emerged from a crowded field that included candidates from all over the political spectrum.
It might be too early to predict how the California primary shapes up — it’s possible that, no matter what, Harris’ star power, name recognition, and stature might be too much to overcome, especially if Democratic voters feel bad for her and want to show their support for her after what happened in 2024. It’s also possible that a progressive like Porter could inflict enough damage on Harris that she limps into the general election — or worse, misses out entirely. And, of course, there are the voters. With polls showing some mixed reactions to her entering the race, she might take that as a sign to pass.
The X-Factor
Despite all of the things working against Nixon, he still believed he was going to win the race. Then the Cuban Missile Crisis happened, and Nixon believed it derailed his momentum and helped boost President Kennedy and his Democrats at the ballot box.
Could something like that happen again? With a President as unpredictable as Trump, anything is possible. He’s already trying to stack the deck in his favor by getting red states to engage in mid-decade redistricting. Could he have some October Surprise up his sleeve designed to help his party in 2026? Who knows?
Obviously, you can’t plan for the unpredictable. But what this does illustrate is that some races seem winnable until they aren’t. And oftentimes, it’s something completely unforeseen that does it. Harris would certainly know about that.
So all of this is just a roundabout way of saying that while the circumstances are similar, there are some important distinctions between what Nixon faced in 1962 and what Harris might see in 2026. Harris is in a much stronger position and is probably better suited to being governor than Nixon ever was.
But the risks are there for Harris, and unless she genuinely wishes to be governor, this race might not be worth it for her.
Plus, as Nixon discovered, he didn’t really need the job after all. Might Harris realize the same?
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