Quentin T. Howell, 48, was walking out of church yesterday afternoon in Milledgeville, Georgia, when he got a “very shocking” phone call from a friend. Biden, he learned, had stepped out of the race for reelection.
“Are you serious?” he remembers saying to his friend. “I was surprised because the support on the ground for President Biden has been extremely strong. I was kind of offended, actually.”
Howell is a Democratic delegate—one of 3,936 party members who have the power to nominate their party’s presidential candidate. He had already pledged his vote for Biden back when Georgia held its primary in March, and now the man he was “excited” to back is no longer in the race.
“I was looking forward to voting for Biden,” says Howell, who owns a medical supply company and has been a delegate since former president Barack Obama’s first presidential bid in 2008.
Like most of the delegates heading to the Democratic National Convention this August, Howell was elected by his fellow party members. During the primaries earlier this year, Biden won every Democratic delegate except for 45, including 37 that remain uncommitted, 5 who are still pledged to Rep. Dean Phillips, and 3 that have gone to Maryland businessman Jason Palmer. And though Biden has endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris, as the new candidate at the top of the ticket, there was no obligation for the delegates to follow suit.
But over the past two days, Harris and her team have been calling state delegations, asking them to pledge their support—and she has now garnered an estimated 2,668 delegates, well over the 1,976 threshold required to clinch the nomination.
This means the party will avoid the chaos of an open convention in mid-August in Chicago. The last time Democrats suffered an open convention was in 1968 after Lyndon B. Johnson, the incumbent, withdrew from the race, and the next favored candidate—Senator Robert F. Kennedy—was assassinated. The turmoil that ensued, including bloody televised clashes outside the debate hall, is widely attributed as a reason the Democrats lost that November.
The more than one dozen Democratic delegates The Free Press spoke to say they had no intention of making things difficult for Harris. That includes Howell, the Georgia salesman, who says the first female president, who is both black and South Asian, would be “history in the making.”
“We talk a lot about Dr. Martin Luther King, and we talk about his dream,” he says. “Well, this is the dream coming to fruition.”
In Arizona’s Verde Valley, Llama Habern, a 30-year-old political organizer, says it would have been “foolish” for the party to nominate someone other than Harris. “She’s the best nominee,” says Habern, who goes by they/them pronouns. “And if this is who our president has endorsed, it’s a really good sign.”
In fact, Habern says, they feel as though they’ve already backed Harris, because they gave their state primary vote back in March to the Biden-Harris ticket. “People did choose her name alongside Joe Biden—that gives her credibility,” Habern tells me. “We can’t all purport to protect democracy and then circumvent democracy. Like, that’s just not okay.”
On Monday night, Iowa’s Democratic Party met to unite behind Harris, pledging all of the state’s delegates to the vice president—including Bill Brauch, 68-year-old chair of the Polk County Democrats.
Brauch says he believes there are “a lot of advantages” to supporting her, namely “the ease of transferring the campaign funds.” Biden has so far accumulated a $96 million war chest, all of which is set to go to Harris.
Even so, he says “there’s a whole host of folks” who could have challenged Trump, including Governor Gavin Newsom, Governor Josh Shapiro, and Governor Gretchen Whitmer (all of whom have endorsed Harris). Still, Brauch says, Democrats have a “much better chance of winning” now that Biden is not at the top of the ticket.
“If you would have asked me yesterday, am I excited about going to the convention? I would have said, ‘Mmm, not really.’ When you asked me today, I would say, ‘I’m fired up. I’m really fired up.’ So I’m very happy.”
And yet, the data so far shows little reason for optimism. A Morning Consult poll taken in the aftermath of Biden’s decision shows that even though 65 percent of Democratic voters polled support Harris at the top of the ticket, Trump still leads in match-ups with the vice president by two points.
Adam Zabner, 25, is a fellow delegate of Iowa. Up until Sunday, he admits, he shared “some other concerns that everybody had” about Biden running for reelection. But now, he says Harris will prove herself a worthy contender and she has “my full support.”
“She’s a proven leader,” says Zabner, the youngest serving state legislator. “She provides a really great contrast with former President Trump. And I think this is a moment where our party needs to be unified together around someone who’s been a part of this ticket.”
He adds that he supports Harris, 59, formerly a senator from California and the state’s attorney general, because she “can continue the really successful domestic policies of the Biden presidency.”
On Sunday night, the chair of the Democratic Party in North Carolina announced that the state’s 130 delegates unanimously decided to nominate Harris. That includes Jacquez Johnson, a city council member in Thomasville, who tells The Free Press that even though he’s a “big Joe Biden supporter,” Harris is “the best Democrat to really win this thing in November.”
“I’ll be 1,000 percent behind her come the convention, no matter if there are other candidates that also seek that nomination,” says Johnson, 24 and one of the youngest elected officials in the state.
Donald Dantzler, a city councilperson in Fitchburg, Wisconsin, says he is pleased his party will put forth a unified presence at the DNC next month, avoiding what could have been an “extremely chaotic” event.
“I just feel like that could potentially send a message to the other side, like, ‘Oh, those Democrats don’t have it together, and they’re just picking people at the last minute,’” says Dantzler.
Meanwhile, back at the Howell household in Milledgeville, Georgia, Quentin passes the phone to his wife, Latonya.
Latonya tells me she “really wanted” Biden to stay in the race. She believed his cancellation of more than $167 billion of student debt would “help us as a nation in the long run” and that his widespread name recognition would help him at the ballot box.
“But if this is his decision, we’re going to go with that,” says Latonya, 47, also a delegate. “I supported Kamala as the vice president, and I’ll support her as president as well.”
Even though she personally was gunning for Biden, she says she’s ultimately voting for the party’s platform, not the specific candidate.
“At the end of the day, Biden is more of a messenger. We were in support of the message he was projecting. And Kamala has worked diligently behind him. And she is definitely on point and ready to carry out that message.”
This piece has been updated to reflect recent events.
Rupa Subramanya and Francesca Block contributed reporting to this article. Olivia Reingold is a reporter for The Free Press. Follow her on X @Olivia_Reingold and read her piece, “Why America’s Zoomers Are Turning MAGA.”
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I am bewildered (so I should not ) by the reasons for Kamala's support. It is not the good of the country, not to defend democracy. It is HISTORY first-black, Asian woman, without children. Wow that is the main reason for her election? Oh yeah, easy funds transfer and united party elite. God, save America, please!
In defense of the democrats elation over Harris, based on people I know, I think a lot of democrats don’t necessarily think she’s their best candidate or even a great option, but they are just so relieved to have biden out of the way and they at least have someone capable of representing their views on stage. And there is some pragmatism on rallying around a candidate who supports your positions. That said, anyone who is a “party member” like a delegate is going to give overly effusive praise that maybe exceeds the true sentiments of the voters.