Vice President Kamala Harris returns to Northern California to a divided Democratic Party

Vice President Kamala Harris returned to her native Northern California this week, and it wasn’t always a friendly homecoming.

California should be an easy political assignment. Harris is not only its former state attorney general and U.S. senator, but it’s a state the Biden-Harris ticket won easily in 2020.

But visiting Sacramento last week and San Jose earlier this week, she was confronted by protesters of all age groups, religions, and races, calling for a cease-fire in Gaza.

Their anger at Harris and the Biden administration’s response to the conflict in Gaza represents a much larger issue for its 2024 campaign — will the Biden-Harris Administration attract enough young, progressive voters to ward off the reelection of presumptive Republican candidate Donald Trump?

Harris had come to San Jose, and last week to Sacramento, and took swings at former President Donald Trump for his role in overturning Roe v. Wade, which resulted in several states implementing harsh restrictions on abortion access. Harris’s San Jose visit was part of her nationwide tour to highlight the issue.

Instead of finding cheers, she had to deal with protesters. In Sacramento, a small group chanted outside the Leland Stanford Mansion near the Capitol, where she spoke to legislators. In San Jose they took their fight one step further by interrupting Harris’ conversation with actress and Democratic activist Sophia Bush multiple times in the 30-minute conversation the two had at East San Jose’s Mexican Heritage Plaza Theater.

Harris and President Joe Biden can expect more of the same not only in California, but around the country.

“We’re seeing this conflict continue to take on a very large role in the American political narrative,” said Sara Sadhwani, assistant professor of politics at Pomona College.

“Unless there is an easing of relations in the Middle East, it’s going to continue to play a role in the 2024 election.”

A focus on reproductive rights

The San Jose event illustrated a schism in the Democratic Party that won’t be easily fixed.

Scattered protests disrupted the San Jose event for the 450 members in the audience, and Harris supporters counter-chanted “Four more years!” as the vice president sought to bring attention back to the topic at hand: the Republican, Trump-led war on women’s reproductive health and bodily autonomy.

“We have a lot of very important issues that we all must discuss,” she said as protesters in the theater yelled “Cease-fire now.”

“But the topic for this discussion is what we need to do to fight back against laws that are criminalizing health care providers and that are making women suffer in our country.”

Some of the women who disrupted the event told The Sacramento Bee that there is no discussion of reproductive health care without discussing the suffering of women in Palestine, as reports from Gaza depict pregnant women and newborn babies as bearing the brunt of destruction.

Calls for a ceasefire “seem to fall on deaf ears, and the situation is urgent,” said Margaret Okuzumi, a member of the Santa Clara County Democratic Party Central Committee and a state Democratic Party executive board member.

“So I felt compelled to take this opportunity to get the message across directly to the VP that we must not facilitate genocide. To do otherwise is anti-woman, anti-child and counter to Democratic values and the wishes of most Democratic voters.”

Okuzumi, a 52-year-old Sunnyvale resident, was one of six women in the theater who protested.

Another was Ellen Caminiti, a 28-year-old resident of San Francisco, who wanted to “look (Harris) right in the eyes and tell her to trust women, and call for a ceasefire.”

Harris continued to speak over the protesters, and at one point acknowledged, “we all want this conflict to end as soon as possible.”

Caminiti is a reproductive justice activist, and registered Democrat. But like Okuzumi, she feels the Democratic Party at large is failing to represent its members on this issue — especially Harris, who has Bay Area roots.

“The Bay Area is pretty clear on being pro-Palestinian and pro-ceasefire,” she said. “(Harris) having a tour in the Bay Area to talk about abortion was another reason I wanted to protest and attend.”

Caminiti admits that the Democratic Party is still a better option than Trump.

Trump, as Harris pointed out, has talked about how “proud” he is to have played a role in the dissolution of abortion access in the U.S.

As president, he selected three Supreme Court Justices — Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett — who would support overturning Roe v. Wade, the case that legalized abortion in all 50 states.

“Take him at his word,” Harris warned. “He’s proud of what he did.”

Driving voter turnout

While the audience was not as friendly as Harris may have anticipated, her visit was part of a larger mission: motivating voters to turn out for state and local races.

“It’s not like Harris was here because we’re a swing state,” said Mark Baldassare, the statewide survey director at the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California.

“She was here because there are 52 House seats. And how those House seats get determined to some degree will be dependent on voter turnout ... so the Democratic Party and the Biden-Harris ticket are going to be paying a lot of attention to California.” Democrats need a net gain of five House seats to win a majority in the next Congress, and at least five California Republican-held seats are regarded as being in play.

Harris making two separate stops in Northern California is a way to prompt voter turnout on crucial races in the state, particularly in the Central Valley.

“She’s had strong support in all the statewide elections she’s been involved in,” said Baldassare. “She definitely has a base here.”

The party needs that base to show up in November, lest they lose another two years with a Republican majority in the House.

Voter turnout is always higher in a presidential election year, and California voters have plenty to motivated them. They are most concerned about economic conditions, homelessness, and housing, according to a Public Policy Institute of California poll published in December 2023.

Abortion was notably not one of California voters’ biggest concerns in the most recent survey.

It is, however, “one of the issues which, for many years, Californians have been in strong support,” said Baldassare. And since California passed Proposition 1 (which enshrined abortion in the state constitution), California voters are less concerned about what’s happened in the state and more concerned about the threat to it nationally.

“I think it’s one of the issues we’re going to hear a lot about in this election,” Baldassare said.

Democrats’ response to Gaza suffering ‘alienating voters’

And as the death toll in Gaza keeps rising, more and more people believe Israel should agree to a ceasefire. According to a Jan. 4-8 poll from the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, 41% of 8,199 registered voters in California support a ceasefire, with a margin of error of 1.5%.

Democrats’ being conflicted on the issue may have ramifications in November.

“In many ways, this ongoing protest is really playing into the hands of Donald Trump,” Sadhwani said.

“Most of these protesters are threatening to stay home in 2024, meaning fewer votes for Biden and Harris. It’s also pushing (away) Jewish voters, who have often found their home in the Democratic Party. Where will they go in 2024? That can have real consequences to the outcome to the election.”

The women who disrupted Harris’ visit said it’s most certainly “alienating” potential voters.

“The Biden administration’s position on Gaza is definitely alienating voters from the Democratic Party,” said Okuzumi, one of the women who protested in San Jose.

“If the Biden Administration cannot grasp the ethics and morality of this and continues to block calls for cease-fire at the U.N. and our Congress hands over to Israel billions of our money each year without any conditions while we have so many unmet needs at home, we’ll alienate a whole generation of young voters, and many others, from voting for Democrats and giving this administration another four years in office.”

Caminiti said that she still believes in voting for Democratic Party values at the local level, but questions whether she’ll vote for Biden and Harris.

“I really lost faith in the Democratic Party,” she said. And their ability to represent us.”