Black women rally around Harris for president after Biden drops out

Black women leaders and their allies are swiftly mobilizing and fundraising around Vice President Kamala Harris‘s presidential campaign after President Joe Biden stepped down from the Democratic ticket.

In one notable example, a black women’s advocacy group raised $1.5 million within three hours in support of Harris on Sunday evening. Win With Black Women announced that more than 44,000 black women joined an impromptu Zoom call to strategize on how best to support Harris. The off-the-record call quickly reached capacity, with organizer Jotaka Eaddy having to increase capacity.

Some of the nation’s top black leaders joined the meeting, including Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-OH), the immediate past chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus. Beatty later told MSNBC that “for us, it’s personal, and we stand with Vice President Harris.”

Other lawmakers on the call included Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), a fellow Californian and noted critic of former President Donald Trump; Donna Brazile, a former interim chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee; Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX), a rising star in the Democratic Party; and Melanie Campbell, the president and CEO of the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation. Attendees of the Zoom meeting were encouraged to post a graphic showing their support for Harris on social media.

Members of Harris’s historically black sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha, began calling for organizing on behalf of Harris as Democratic leaders began to endorse the vice president. Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority President Danette Anthony Reed also attended the Zoom meeting on Sunday. Former two-term Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams also endorsed Harris on Sunday evening as the momentum picked up.

“I’ve known Vice President Kamala Harris for a long time. She’s a tenacious fighter, a champion for our rights & defender of our democracy. United, she will lead us as we defeat Donald Trump this November,” Abrams wrote on X. “I am proud to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris as our Democratic nominee. Let’s go!”

Harris previously made history as the first black and Asian American vice president of the United States, and if elected in November, she would become the nation’s second black president after Barack Obama and the first black woman president.

But first, she must secure the Democratic nomination by the time the party meets in Chicago for the national convention next month. The DNC’s rules committee is meeting on Wednesday to “implement a framework to select a new nominee, which will be open, transparent, fair, and orderly,” according to a source familiar.

Harris will also face a tough battle against Trump, who retains fervent support among the GOP after accepting the nomination at the Republican National Convention last week. Republicans have begun attacking Harris by linking her to Biden’s troubled tenure and brandishing the vice president as a “radical.”

While Harris will likely have locked down black women’s support, as they remain the Democrats’ most loyal voting bloc, she will have to work harder at shoring up support among black men, whom Trump and his allies are attempting to woo.

Several prominent black leaders, such as Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-TX), and Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL), have hosted campaign events targeting black men, upset at Biden’s handling of the economy. Hunt and Donalds previously told the Washington Examiner they will continue to hold events focusing on black men as long as the Trump campaign wants them to.

“We got four months to continue to work to make sure that we get people, particularly black males, to the polls,” Hunt said. “President Trump gets 25% of the black male vote. It’s mathematically not even a conversation.”

But black women leaders remain largely united around Harris. “I am confident that she will have the delegates. She will have the resources, and she will have the volunteers,” Brazile told ABC’s David Muir about Harris.