On Monday, North Carolina’s Attorney General and Democratic nominee for governor, Josh Stein, endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for president. His opponent, Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, said it signaled Stein’s allegiance to Biden-Harris policies.

Over the weekend, Biden announced that he would not run for re-election in November and endorsed Harris.

Harris was not on state ballots in the 2024 Democratic primaries, so with just over 100 days to go until Election Day, Harris and her team have been working the phones to get Democratic delegates to pledge their vote to her for next month’s party convention. Early indications are that Harris will secure the necessary support to be the presumptive nominee.

the back room

Stein joins Cooper and other inner circle Democrats in promoting Harris as the party’s nominee to take on Republican candidate and former President Donald Trump. Republicans are criticizing the upheaval saying it is the third presidential election in a row where Democratic party “elite” have selected the candidate, rather than leaving it to voters.

Biden has not given a press briefing or been seen publicly since Sunday’s announcement. The White House says the president is recovering from COVID in his Delaware home.

Dean Phillips, D-Minn, who finished a distant second to Biden in the primaries with 3 delegates, says his party “sleepwalked into disaster.” He is calling on fellow elected Democrats to hold “an immediate vote of confidence,” even if anonymous, on the president and share the results directly with him.

“Though I earned about 20% of the vote in the New Hampshire primary, it became clear that I wasn’t competing only against the president but against a political machine designed to prevent competition, suppress challengers, and silence dissent,” Phillips wrote in the Wall Street Journal Sunday.

the war chest

Meantime, Harris is gathering endorsements and taking control of the Biden campaign finances. Over the weekend, the Biden-Harris Campaign officially filed paperwork with the Federal Elections Commission to change the name of the $96 million campaign account to the Harris for President Campaign.

“Because Biden and Harris share a campaign committee, the Vice President and her running mate can continue using the campaign’s existing funds for the general election if she is on the Democratic ticket as either the presidential or vice-presidential nominee,” explained Trevor Potter from Campaign Legal Center. “If the new ticket does not include Vice President Harris, the rules are different.  Campaign committees are subject to federal contribution limits, which limit candidate-to-candidate contributions to $2,000 per election.”

With party leaders appearing to coalesce around Harris, North Carolina’s Democrat candidate for lieutenant governor, Sen. Rachel Hunt has endorsed her as well.

“While Harris has a lower popularity than Biden and carries baggage from being a part of his administration, she does carry a money advantage,” said Jim Stirling of the Civitas Center of Public Integrity at the John Locke Foundation.  She can keep the war chest, has ties with major financial backers in Wall Street, can flip the age debate to Democrats advantage, and prevents a fracture in the party for passing up a minority woman who was already on the ticket with the prior nominee.”

Still, even as the Democrats speak of “exciting” times in their election with a younger candidate, Republican Donald Trump leads Harris every recent poll, although she does slightly better than Biden.

On Monday, the Trump campaign re-released an ad from last month focused on the likelihood that Harris would replace Biden.

Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson and candidate for governor issued a statement Monday saying that Harris “owns” the border crisis, having been tapped in 2021 by Biden to manage the diplomacy surrounding illegal immigration along the southern border.

“By endorsing Harris’ presidential bid, Josh Stein is once again showing North Carolina voters that he stands with the disastrous open-border policies of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris,” said Robinson. “From lying about sanctuary cities to touting liberal sheriffs that refuse to cooperate with ICE, and now endorsing the architect of the Biden-Harris Border Crisis, Josh Stein puts illegal immigrants first and North Carolinians last.”