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Former Vice President Kamala Harris has made her first major return to campaign politics since her 2024 presidential run, endorsing Democratic Rep. Jasmine Crockett in the competitive Texas Senate primary.
The endorsement, first reported by the Texas Tribune, was confirmed by the Crockett campaign. Harris’ endorsement involves two robocalls to boost Crockett, including one on Friday and another ahead of Tuesday’s primary, according to a Harris aide.
In the robocall, Harris says, “Texas has the chance to send a fighter like Jasmine Crockett to the United States Senate. Jasmine has the experience and record to hold Donald Trump and his billionaire cronies accountable.”
Crockett is in a hotly contested race against state Rep. James Talarico for the Democratic Senate nomination on March 3. GOP Sen. John Cornyn is also in a competitive primary against state Attorney General Ken Paxton and Rep. Wesley Hunt.
While the Democratic primary could be decided on Tuesday if a candidate wins a majority of the vote, the Republican contest is expected to head to a May 26 runoff.
Harris’ support for Crockett marks the former vice president’s first endorsement in a competitive primary since she lost to Trump in the 2024 presidential race. Harris, who announced last year that she would not run for governor of California in 2026, made a low-profile appearance on the campaign trail in a special congressional election in Tennessee last year.
She also went on a tour to promote her memoir about the 2024 campaign. And she recently relaunched her campaign’s social media account in an effort to reach Gen Z voters.
Crockett was a national co-chair for Harris’ campaign in 2024, and she has touted that role on the campaign trail in Texas. But Crockett also had some criticism for how Democrats approached the 2024 race, suggesting at a recent campaign stop that the party had focused too much on winning over Republicans.
“I have to be honest at some of the things that I heard as I traveled with the country. A lot of our base was not motivated,” Crockett said at an event in Conroe, Texas, earlier this month.
“When we think about the coalition that makes us successful, some people just opted to sit on the couch,” Crockett continued. “And in some of those conversations, I was asking, like, ‘What’s happening? Like, what’s going on? And there was so much attention paid to getting Republicans that a lot of Democrats were like, ‘What is the point?’ Right?”
“There was a lot of attention about, I’m going to put a Republican in the Cabinet. I’m going to have the Republicans come out here for us,” Crockett added. “I’m not saying that Republicans are not welcome, because the fights that I’m waging, they are for everyone. But I also think that it is truly only fair to the Democratic base to double down and say, ‘I am a Democrat, and I am going to fight for those principle, things like raising the wage, which, again, helps everyone.”
Turning out disaffected voters who may be more inclined to back Democrats is a major part of Crockett’s case that she can flip the Senate seat in Texas. Talarico, meanwhile, has stressed that he can appeal to Democrats, independents and Republicans, noting that he won a state legislative seat that Trump also carried.
