Attorney General Kamala Harris is expected to announce Tuesday that she is running for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Barbara Boxer.
“She’s not testing the waters. She’s charting the course. She’s in with both feet,” a Harris adviser who requested anonymity told the Los Angeles Times.
Harris’s expected announcement — likely to be in the form of a statement — would come one day after Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that he would not run for the seat. Their announcements avert a battle between them for the governorship, which Newsom is expected to seek.
Newsom and Harris are both from the Bay Area, share many of the same supporters and are popular among liberals in California’s Democratic Party.
“While I am humbled by the widespread encouragement of so many and hold in the highest esteem those who serve us in federal office, I know that my head and my heart, my young family’s future and our unfinished work all remain firmly in the state of California — not Washington, D.C.,” Newsom wrote in a message on his Facebook page Monday. “Therefore I will not seek election to the U.S. Senate in 2016.”
Boxer, 74, announced last week that she would not seek reelection in 2016. Harris, 50, a two-term attorney general who previously served as San Francisco’s district attorney, will be the first candidate to officially declare she will run for the seat. She appears more than likely to receive Newsom’s backing.
“In the months to come, I look forward to doing whatever I can to help elect California’s next great Democratic Senator — one worth of succeeding Barbara Boxer and serving this remarkable state of dreamers and doers in the United States Senate,” Newsom said Monday.
Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and billionaire environmental activist Tom Steyer are also considering bids, as are several members of Congress, the Los Angeles Times reported. Among Republicans, Assemblyman Rocky Chavez and two former state GOP chairmen are weighing runs, according to the newspaper.
— City News Service
