Only if she really wants the job. Richard Nixon saw it as a stepping-stone and ended up losing in 1962.
Kamala Harris’s postelection message to her supporters has been to “stay in the fight.” That may be a sign she’s keeping the door open to a 2026 campaign for governor of California. According to a Nov. 13 poll from the University of California, Berkeley’s Institute for Governmental Studies, 72% of California Democrats would be very or somewhat likely to vote for her for governor.
Ms. Harris’s life will change dramatically on Jan. 20. She will no longer enjoy the luxury of flying on Air Force 2, nor will she be surrounded and supported by a large staff to handle the details of her professional life, as she has been for 21 years, since being sworn in as district attorney of San Francisco. Starting on July 20, her Secret Service protection and chauffeurs will be gone—she’ll have to relearn the freeways’ rules of the road.
If Ms. Harris reactivates her license to practice law, offers will freely flow for her to join the finest firms. Corporations and prominent foundations will dangle board positions with extensive perks. These would be options for her to use her influence as other politicians have done after leaving high positions. Maybe she won’t have to pump her own gasoline after all.
But she could also decide to seek public office again. If so, she has two possible avenues: rebuilding alliances for a presidential reprise in 2028 or running for California governor. If she opts for Sacramento, I suggest she turn to an unlikely source for advice: Richard Nixon. After he lost the 1960 presidential election, Nixon wrote pages analyzing the pros and cons of running for governor of the Golden State.
Ms. Harris is certainly receiving counsel about her future from political advisers and allies, would-be strategists, opinion journalists and, naturally, the second gentleman, Doug Emhoff. Despite the different political, social and media environment during Nixon’s time, he faced the same basic dilemma after returning to California in January 1961: Influential people in his life all had strong views on the best course for his career.
Gen. Douglas MacArthur bizarrely told Nixon to run for his old seat in Congress. (Nixon had served in both the House and the Senate.) According to Nixon, MacArthur told him: “California is a great state, but it is too parochial. You should be in Washington, not Sacramento.” Len Hall, a close Nixon adviser and former Republican National Committee chairman, had different advice: “Either you run [for governor] or you’re finished in national politics.” Both were afflicted by a common disease among those dispensing political advice. When your own political future isn’t at stake, the counsel tends to be delivered with excessive certitude—something I’m confident Ms. Harris learned during her recent presidential campaign.
Nixon faced a nagging personal issue during his ultimately unsuccessful gubernatorial campaign. As he wrote, in the beginning of the summer of 1961 “I still thought it would be a case of running for the wrong office at the wrong time.” He then added: “My biggest problem in the campaign was the question of my actual interest in being governor of California.”
Even if Ms. Harris overcomes this kind of inner turmoil about the wisdom of running for governor, she should take heed of the central burden that confronted Nixon throughout his candidacy. As he defined it, “There was no morning, afternoon, or evening that I did not deny I was planning to use the governorship as a stepping-stone to a presidential candidacy in 1964.” This is the very accusation that would befoul a Harris gubernatorial campaign—though perhaps with less intensity due to her relative lack of adversarial press. Ms. Harris would have to answer the question: Does she want to be California’s leader, or does she want to be a leader from California who wants to be president in 2028?
It’s a fair guess that Mr. Emhoff will be part of his wife’s final decision. Pat Nixon fiercely disapproved of Nixon’s choice to run for governor. Ms. Harris and Mr. Emhoff won’t have only the normal family dynamics coloring her political aspirations; they also must give thought to the type of question Nixon never had to answer: To what extent was the vice president aware of President Biden’s cognitive decline during moments of potential national and international crises, and how concerned was she?
Still, polls indicate Ms. Harris could win a gubernatorial campaign if she runs. If she decides to do so, I welcome her back to California, where gasoline is too expensive and tax rates too high. She can join the rest of us in complaining to the governor.
Mr. Khachigian was an aide to Richard Nixon and chief speechwriter to Ronald Reagan and is author of the memoir “Behind Closed Doors: In the Room With Reagan and Nixon.”
