Vice President Kamala Harris stepped up her call for Black women to mobilize for the 2024 election, telling members of the Zeta Phi Beta sorority Wednesday that the nation was counting on them to energize, organize and register voters and get them to the polls.
“I believe we face a choice between two different visions for our nation: one focused on the future, the other focused on the past,” Harris said in a keynote address to a packed house at the Zeta Phi Beta sorority’s Grand Boulé convention in Indianapolis. “With your support, I am fighting for the future of our nation.”
Harris, a graduate of Howard University, a historically Black college, and a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha, has repeatedly drawn on her connections with Black college women on the campaign trail, urging her fellow sorority sisters to step forward in the months leading up to the 2024 election.
Harris called the sisterhood members “some of the most powerful advocates for justice in America.”
(Darron Cummings/Associated Press)
Leaders of the country's “Divine Nine” black fraternities and sororities have already rushed to pledge their support.
Before Harris took the stage, Stacie N.C. Grant, international president and CEO of Zeta Phi Beta, said all members of the Divine Nine “are united in an unprecedented effort to register voters, educate and mobilize for coordinated efforts to get people out to vote.”
“We are stronger together,” Grant said.
Addressing the crowd as “distinguished ladies” and “some of the most powerful advocates for justice in America,” Harris paid tribute to the sisterhoods for playing a historic role in the fight for rights.
The women of Zeta Phi Beta, she said, had marched for voting rights and an end to segregation during the civil rights era. They had worked with the March of Dimes to raise the issue of maternal health. They had also, she noted, played a role in shaping recent American politics, helping to secure the Biden-Harris campaign’s victory in 2020.
It was a message similar to one she delivered earlier this month to 20,000 members of her own sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha, at its national convention in Dallas.
At times, he repeated phrases almost word for word: “When we organize, mountains move,” he said. “When we mobilize, nations change. And when we vote, we make history.”
After praising President Biden as a “leader with a bold vision,” Harris laid out her own vision for affordable health care, touting her administration’s role in capping the cost of insulin, elevating maternal health care and expanding postpartum Medicaid coverage, as well as championing the Child Tax Credit and measures to alleviate student loan debt.
He then warned against “those who want to take the nation backwards,” singling out Project 2025, a right-wing policy plan written by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. Former President Trump has sought to distance himself from the project and adopted a separate party platform last week at the Republican National Convention, where he was officially nominated for president.
“Can you believe they put that in writing?” Harris asked, telling the crowd that the authors of Project 2025 planned to cut Medicare, repeal the $35 cap on insulin, eliminate the Department of Education and end programs like Head Start that provide preschool education to hundreds of thousands of children.
“These extremists want to take us back,” he said as the crowd roared. “But we are not going back.”
Harris spoke to the fellowship in Indiana hours before Trump appeared in North Carolina for his first public campaign rally since Biden dropped out of the 2024 race.
Vice President Kamala Harris returns to Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland, on Tuesday after campaigning in Wisconsin.
(Kevin Mohatt/Associated Press)
In his campaign against Biden, 81, Trump had focused his attack on the president's age and mental acuity, but the 78-year-old Republican cannot rely on that argument against Harris, who at 59 is nearly 19 years his junior.
In a series of social media posts this week, he has criticized his new rival, whom he has dubbed “Kamala Harris the liar,” for her border record, referring to her as the “Biden-appointed 'Border Czar' who never visited the border and whose incompetence gave us the WORST and MOST DANGEROUS border in the world.”
He has also disparaged Harris for performing “terribly” in the polls, even as early polls released Tuesday indicate she is seeing a surge in support.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll showed Harris opening up a 2 percentage point lead over Trump: Respondents favored her 44% to 42% over Trump — within the 3-point margin of error but a notable jump after the two tied at 44% in a hypothetical mid-July matchup and Trump led by 1 percentage point in July negotiations. Asked whether Harris was “mentally sharp and able to deal with challenges,” 56% of registered voters surveyed said yes, compared with 49% for Trump and 22% for Biden.
An NPR/PBS News/Marist poll released Tuesday showed Trump holding a 1-point lead over Harris, also within the margin of error.
In a memo to GOP supporters, Trump campaign pollster Tony Fabrizio warned of a “Harris honeymoon” ahead of next month’s Democratic National Convention. New polls showing Harris ahead, he said, did not change the fundamentals of the race.
“Democrats dumping one candidate in favor of another does NOT change voter discontent with the economy, inflation, crime, open border, housing costs, not to mention concerns about two foreign wars,” Fabrizio wrote. “More importantly, voters will also learn about Harris’ dangerously liberal record before she became Biden’s partner.”
Over the past 24 hours, a number of Republican Party figures have taken to appearing on cable television to portray Harris — whom many Democrats criticize as a centrist establishment figure — as a radical member of the liberal left.
“Kamala Harris is from San Francisco,” Montana Sen. Steve Daines said on CNN Tuesday. “She's a liberal from San Francisco! A radical from San Francisco!”
“Kamala Harris is soft on crime,” said Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, who called her Senate voting record more liberal than Bernie Sanders’. “She’s a failed liberal from San Francisco.”
Harris also drew the ire of Israel's supporters for refusing to chair Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's joint address to Congress on Wednesday.
“Kamala Harris will meet with a sorority in Indianapolis instead of attending Bibi Netanyahu’s speech to Congress,” Daines posted on social media.
Following Trump's rally on Wednesday, Biden is scheduled to speak from the Oval Office in the evening about his plans and how he will “finish the job for the American people,” his first address since announcing Sunday that he was dropping out of the 2024 race.
