By Magaly Muñoz
In a wild turn of events that many had been speculating about and asking for over the last several weeks, President Joe Biden decided over the weekend that he would be stepping down from running for reelection and instead endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to be the Democratic nominee to fight against former President Donald Trump.
Shortly after Biden’s announcement, Harris proudly declared that she would indeed be throwing her hat in the ring to run for president. The news immediately created a frenzy of excitement and hope from voters.
Leading up to the announcement, Democrats had been calling for Biden to step down, especially after his debate with Trump, where slip ups in speech and body language had many questioning whether he was in the right physical and mental state to carry on for four more years as president.
Democratic political leaders such as former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi reportedly were having conversations with Biden to step down, fearing he would lose in November. Big donors like George Clooney also felt that the president was no longer a viable option, going as far as writing an opinion piece in the New York Times expressing his concerns.
But the support for Harris has been overwhelmingly positive over the last several days.
In the first 24 hours since her announcement, her campaign raised over $81 million, the largest donation day in history, Harris’ campaign team said.
Local Bay Area leaders quickly took to social media in the hours and days following the news to endorse Harris for president.
“I am thrilled to give my support to Vice President Kamala Harris in her bid to win the presidency and defeat Donald Trump. VP Harris is an Oakland native, a fighter, and a visionary leader who is THE VOICE we need in the White House. Her dedication to justice, equality, and progress reflects the very spirit of Oakland, and I am confident she will bring the same passion and tenacity to the presidency,” Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao wrote on X (formerly known as Twitter).
Miles away, San Francisco Mayor London Breed expressed her support for the former San Francisco District Attorney and California Attorney General.
“I am confident that my friend, Vice President Harris, has the experience, the strength, the judgment and the integrity to defeat Donald Trump and serve as our next President,” Breed said on Instagram.
Oakland city council members Treva Reid and Nikki Fortunato-Bas also shared their excitement to have Harris as a contender for president.
Residents also have expressed their immense happiness at seeing a Black woman as the first to potentially hold the title as president.
The Sunday of the announcement, a political coalition called Win With Black Women held their weekly Zoom meeting to discuss the news and attracted an estimated 44,000 participants eager to join the conversation.
This meeting, which typically has a few hundred participants on the call, had people waiting up to an hour to get into the online webinar.
Patrice Berry, who’s currently running for an Oakland Unified School Board seat, told the Post that the Zoom meeting was “the conjuring of ancestral wisdom, love and power.”
Berry had not previously attended the Win With Black Women conversation but was feeling uneasy after reading the news about Biden not seeking reelection so she wanted to hear what others had to say about the matter.
She was in awe at the number of people that had shown up to begin organizing and rallying behind Harris. People prayed, spoke words of encouragement, and recognized the Black female leaders in their own communities that were making a difference.
Harris’s potential presidency would create opportunities to hold people accountable and “build the world we want to see” because it would be the first time a Black woman was elected as president, Berry said.
“Even as I talk to my daughter, who is thinking about imagining herself as a president, that’s been wild. I didn’t think I would see that in my lifetime,” Berry shared.
$1.6 million was raised for the Harris campaign during the Zoom call, organizers of the event have reported.
A similar organization called Win With Black Men met Monday night and had an attendance of about 53,000 participants who raised $1.3 million in four hours, attendees said on social media.
“The BLACK COMMUNITY is uniting in ways we have not seen in politics before,” one participant wrote on X.
