Harris will seek Democratic nomination and could be the first Black woman and Asian American to lead a major party ticket

(CNN) — Vice President Kamala Harris said she plans to seek the Democratic nomination after President Joe Biden stepped aside and endorsed her, setting up a push that could make her the first Black woman and first Asian American to lead the ticket of a major political party.

“I am honored to have the President’s endorsement and my intention is to earn and win this nomination,” she said in a statement.

Biden’s historic endorsement — and Harris’s pledge to unite the party behind her —came Sunday after he announced that he is dropping his reelection bid following weeks of disarray within the Democratic Party. The president’s disastrous debate called into question his ability to win a second term and govern for another four years.

“My fellow Democrats, I have decided not to accept the nomination and to focus all my energies on my duties as President for the remainder of my term. 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. Today I want to offer my full support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee,” Biden said.

Still, despite the president’s backing, it remains unclear if Harris will become the nominee, or what process the Democratic Party would take to select an alternative. It will now be up to the delegates to the party’s national convention to choose their candidate. While Harris allies have sought to secure her path to the nomination, some Democrats have stopped short of backing her or explicitly called for an open nomination process.

Democratic National Committee chairman Jaime Harrison said in a statement that in the coming days the party will “undertake a transparent and orderly process to move forward as a united Democratic Party with a candidate who can defeat Donald Trump in November.”

Logistically, Harris is the natural heir to the ticket as Biden’s running mate.

The Biden-Harris campaign on Sunday formally amended filings with the Federal Election Commission to rename its principal committee “Harris for President,” saying that the committee name is “different than previously reported.”

The committee also filed a letter with the commission stating that “Vice President Harris is now a candidate for United States President in the 2024 election and will henceforth be conducting campaign activities only in pursuit of that office.”

Control of the campaign war chest, however – totaling $95.9 million at the end of June – depends on whether Harris remains on Democrats’ 2024 ticket.

Recent polling has also shown her performing better against former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, than Biden and other potential Democratic contenders.

Should there be efforts to pass over Harris in favor of Democrats seen as likely to run in 2028, there may be backlash from the vice president’s supporters and prominent Black Democrats. But Harris has also experienced something of a renaissance within her party, as Democrats showered her with praise in the days following the debate.

Throughout her vice presidency, Harris has struggled to define herself while juggling an issue portfolio that has included difficult topics such as voting rights and stemming the tide of migrants coming from Central America. On the former, an effort to bolster the Voting Rights Act failed in Congress. On migration, Harris was criticized on the right for not spending enough time on the border and on the left for telling migrants in a speech, “Do not come.”

As recently as last year, some Democrats were worried that negative views of Harris could hurt the ticket, prompting prominent Democrats to urge the party to stop undermining her.

But in the weeks since Biden’s June debate performance, Harris has settled into a groove, becoming a key surrogate for Biden’s reelection campaign on reproductive health as the campaign put it, the threat Trump poses to democracy.

Harris allies have argued that much of the criticism is a result of racism and sexism against the country’s first woman of color in such a position. Now, they say, the country is seeing in Harris what her allies have seen for years.

“Oftentimes Black women are not seen until they’re needed,” said LaTosha Brown, a co-founder of Black Voters Matter, a progressive group that works to boost Black voter turnout. “We’ve seen her constantly berated, marginalized, questioned. I think that the shift is because there’s a need.”

‘Uncharted territory’

A growing number of Democratic officials and donors already have rallied behind Harris, including the Congressional Black Caucus PAC, Bill and Hillary Clinton, and Democratic Senate candidates including Andy Kim of New Jersey, Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland and incumbent Sen. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin.

Even as Democrats waited for Biden to make his decision, Harris supporters were working behind the scenes for the last week to secure support from delegates -– not to push Biden out, but to be prepared in case he left the race.

“We have been whipping delegates for the last week,” a senior Democratic strategist who worked on Harris’ 2020 campaign told CNN.

Her network of backers includes a number of key Black female Democratic allies who have been quietly organizing for weeks to ensure that she would be well positioned to lead the ticket if Biden stepped aside. Those women will meet in a Zoom call Sunday evening.

“The bottom line is, we are ready to go,” said Brown of Black Voters Matter. “We are grateful for President Biden’s service and that’s why we fought for him until the end. We are ecstatic that he has put his endorsement behind Vice President Kamala Harris. We expect the full Democratic apparatus to do the same and if they don’t, they will lose this election.”

Harris allies are describing this moment as “uncharted territory” but are confident the party will be able to navigate the days ahead because Biden has endorsed her.

For donors, Biden’s decision to exit the race and endorse Harris represents a seismic change for the Democratic party that many are embracing publicly.

Dmitri Mehlhorn, a Democratic political strategist advising several big-money backers, released a statement Sunday following Biden’s withdrawal supporting Harris.

“Kamala Harris is the American dream personified, daughter of immigrants who met at Cal,” Mehlhorn said. “She is also toughness personified, rising from my home town of Oakland California to become the top prosecutor of the state. With Scranton Joe stepping back, I cannot wait to help elect President Harris.”

Other donors were less enthusiastic about the Harris pick. Top Biden donor John Morgan called the president’s endorsement of Harris a “f— you” to people who “pushed him out.”

“Be careful what you wish for,” he wrote on X.

Harris’s rise

Harris, the daughter of Berkeley political activists and immigrants from India and Jamaica, grew up in Oakland and spent much of her political career in California’s Bay Area. After earning her law degree from the University of California, Hastings College of Law, she became a deputy district attorney for Alameda County. She later served in the San Francisco district attorney and city attorney offices.

In 2003, she was elected district attorney for San Francisco. Seven years later, she was elected California’s attorney general – the first woman, first Black person and first Asian American to hold the position.

Harris’s record in law enforcement would later become both a boon and a burden to her political campaigns for Senate and the White House. Among her more controversial policies was a truancy program she advocated, which allowed parents to be charged with misdemeanors if their children missed too many school days. Harris later said she regretted the “unintended consequences” of the program.

In 2016, Harris won her bid to succeed outgoing California Sen. Barbara Boxer, becoming the second Black woman to ever serve in the US Senate.

As a senator, Harris was known for her prosecutorial questioning style during hearings with Trump administration officials and nominees, including Attorney General Jeff Sessions and future Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Three years later, in January 2019, she entered the Democratic presidential primary. From the start, Harris acknowledged the historic nature of her campaign – she launched her bid on the federal holiday marking Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday and held a news conference at Howard University, the historically Black college she graduated from in 1986.

Harris was one of more than a dozen Democrats, including Biden, who sought the 2020 party nomination. One of Biden’s worst debate moments of that cycle came when Harris blasted him over his opposition in the 1970s to court-ordered busing of students to desegregate schools. The dig from Harris, who was close friends with Biden’s son Beau before his death in 2015, came as a surprise to Biden and angered some his allies.

After she dropped out, Harris became a prominent surrogate for Biden before being named his vice presidential pick in August 2020.

“I’ve decided that Kamala Harris is the best person to help me take this fight to Trump and Mike Pence and then to lead this nation starting in January 2021,” Biden told supporters in an email.

This story and headline have been updated with additional reporting.

CNN’s Kayla Tausche, Eva McKend, Jeff Zeleny, Ethan Cohen and David Wright contributed to this report.

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