President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign made a seamless transition Monday to a Kamala Harris presidential campaign in ways large and small, less than 24 hours after Biden’s exit from the race in favor of his vice president.
At Union Station in New Haven, a Biden administration event to promote the distribution of $450 million in competitive Climate Pollution Reduction Grants was rebranded as the work of the Biden-Harris administration.
Gov. Ned Lamont and U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., who each endorsed Harris earlier in the day, tailored their remarks about the environmental spending as a Biden victory and a harbinger of things to come under Harris.
“I think she’s gonna be a great nominee for our party, an extraordinary president,” Lamont said. “I was proud to endorse her.”
Hours after Biden announced he would not seek reelection, most party leaders and lawmakers followed his lead and quickly endorsed Harris, a former U.S. senator from California who became the first Black and South Asian vice president. That included most of Connecticut’s congressional delegation and statewide elected officials.
Some prominent Democrats, like Lamont and Blumenthal, stopped just short of an endorsement on Sunday, wanting to keep the focus on Biden and digest the news. But they all praised her as a front-runner, and by Monday morning, they joined the steady stream of Democrats endorsing her.
In Connecticut, U.S. Rep. Jim Himes, D-4th District, offered his commitment Monday morning, joining the other Democrats who did so Sunday. And on Monday night, delegates who were once pledged to Biden met virtually and voted to formally endorse Harris ahead of next month’s convention in Chicago.
“What we’re seeing today is historic, really historic,” Blumenthal said. “First of all, a president putting the country first and stepping aside, and then a really qualified, distinguished Black woman taking this historic leadership role, there’s going to be excitement — and not just in the Democratic Party phase, but in the country behind a torch being passed, a new era begun.”
Lamont had just returned from a trade mission in Germany, where he said the business executives he met were rattled by the prospect of Donald Trump returning to the White House, due to his questioning of the need for the NATO alliance and his talk of steep tariffs.
The event in Union Station was more overtly political than other events promoting the fruits of Biden’s success winning passage of initiatives such as the Inflation Reduction Act, which opened a gusher of federal grant money to encourage a transition to greener technologies.
The money will pay for a broad array of efforts to increase the adoption of heat pumps, including those using geothermal technology. A separate $9.5 million grant is going to New Haven. Union Station and a nearby affordable housing project will be getting carbon-neutral and relatively cheap heating and cooling.
“This is what this election is all about,” Lamont said. “You have housing next to the train station, a green train station, green housing next to high speed rail to take you up to Boston or take you down to New York or Stamford. And this is what’s been transformative over the last four years.”
New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker was sure to mention the Biden-Harris administration as the source behind the funding coming to Connecticut. The state received about 4% of funds in this round of grants, four times the 1% that typically goes to a state with 1% of the U.S. population.
“Connecticut is green and getting greener, and New Haven is leading the way,” he said.
David W. Cash, the regional EPA administrator, sounded more like a political operative Monday than an EPA bureaucrat.
“There are press conferences like this happening all over the country, where EPA is teaming up with community advocates, municipalities and states to announce funding that will supercharge the Biden-Harris administration’s investing in America agenda, growing our economy, protecting public health in the environment and passing down a vibrant, equitable and sustainable future to my children and to all of yours,” Cash said.
While Biden leaving the race leaves a vacuum at the top of the ticket, Harris has so far been able to secure critical support from elected officials across the state and the nation as well as reenergize a donor base that became skeptical of a Biden candidacy. As vice president, Harris was able to inherit Biden’s campaign funds of about $96 million, and in the past 24 hours, she raised $81 million in smaller donations.
Some Democrats, however, would still like to see an open contest play out even as most rumored candidates have said they won’t run or back Harris. Any potential candidate would need to get petition signatures from at least 300 delegates if they want to run for the nomination at the convention. Of those signatures, only 50 of them can come from the same state.
The ongoing procession of support out of Connecticut comes as the party wants to demonstrate a unified front after weeks of intra-party hand-wringing and to minimize the risks that come with an open contest months out from an election. Democrats in Connecticut are hoping to further build on that unity with a show of support for Harris ahead of the Democratic National Convention.
Dozens of delegates in Connecticut — who will cast a vote for a new nominee next month in Chicago — moved up their virtual meeting to Monday night to discuss if they want to collectively endorse the vice president. In a voice vote at the meeting, the 79 delegates and alternates overwhelmingly chose to back Harris.
“I don’t know of a single person that I’ve spoken to that isn’t in support [of Harris]. It’s pretty unanimous,” said Laura Cahill of Glastonbury, a first-time DNC delegate who has worked on several statewide campaigns in Connecticut. She said there’s “not a lot of angst or fuss. It’s a really unifying feeling.”
The meeting was a chance for all of the delegates to connect for the first time since Biden announced he would not seek reelection on Sunday.
A number of states, including New Hampshire, have voted to now commit their delegates to the vice president at the convention. Four delegates — state Sen. Christine Cohen, state Rep. Josh Elliott, state Rep. Kate Farrar and state Rep. Corey Paris — issued a joint statement calling on Connecticut to follow suit.
“Vice President Harris has proven she is prepared to lead and will continue the incredible legacy that she shares with President Joe Biden,” they said in the statement. “Time is of the essence to unite and win this election in November. We encourage fellow Connecticut delegates to join us in support of Vice President Kamala Harris for the Democratic Party nomination.”
Connecticut has 60 pledged delegates, along with 14 superdelegates and five alternates. The pledged delegates were bound to Biden until he dropped out of the race and released them to be free agents for a new presidential nominee.
The superdelegates include Lamont, Connecticut’s two DNC members, the state’s congressional delegation, former Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., and senior leaders of the state party. Superdelegates do not get to vote on the first ballot but can cast votes on subsequent ballots until a candidate secures a majority.
The expectation for Monday night’s virtual call is that Harris will not confront major obstacles, though delegates said disappointment over Biden dropping out still lingers.
Some of the elected delegates have a long history of supporting Harris. Tina Duryea backed her when she ran in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary in a crowded field that included Biden. Duryea argued that the influx of campaign donations to Harris’ campaign reflects the sentiment of voters even with the end of primary season.
“We can’t have a primary where people can vote, but the outpouring of donations for Kamala Harris has been very indicative to me for the support she has,” said Duryea, a member of the Norwalk Democratic Town Committee who worked on the finance team for Harris when she first ran for president in the 2020 cycle.
Kenneth McClary, another DNC delegate who serves on Bloomfield Town Council, is “emphatically” supporting Harris and said other lawmakers and delegates of color he has spoken to are also backing her. Thomas J. Clarke, a Hartford City councilman, believes she is “uniquely positioned to prosecute” the case against Trump when it comes to reproductive care, student loans and support for small businesses. Before her time as a senator, Harris was a prosecutor and attorney general of California.
McClary and other delegates argued it is time to rally behind Harris with a few weeks before the convention and only four months until the November election. Republicans, including many of the former president’s political opponents, left their convention in Milwaukee firmly united behind Trump, who had survived an assassination attempt days earlier.
Clarke was a first-time delegate at the 2016 convention when former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton secured the nomination over U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., after a contentious primary that was still on display in Philadelphia. At that convention, Clinton became the first female nominee of a major political party.
He hopes to avoid another “tumultuous” convention and have Democrats make history again with Harris as the first Black woman and Asian American to lead a presidential ticket.
“I knew [the convention] was going to be exciting. This really now tops everything that I expected this was going to be,” Clarke said, before adding a brief warning. “We cannot have a repeat of 2016.”
The Connecticut Mirror/Connecticut Public Radio federal policy reporter position is made possible, in part, by funding from the Robert and Margaret Patricelli Family Foundation.
This story was originally published by the Connecticut Mirror.
