Kamala Harris campaign in trouble, goes all out for Iowa

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Sen. Kamala Harris is campaigning hard in Iowa.

ANALYSIS

During a fundraiser in Los Angeles, a reporter recently overheard her telling fellow Sen. Mazie Hirono of Hawaii, "I'm f*****g moving to Iowa." She won't be alone. Most of her staff will be in the Hawkeye state with the nation's first Caucus on Feb. 3.

Staff who were not let go at Harris' national headquarters in Baltimore will be joining her in Iowa. Additional staff will be coming in from New Hampshire, Nevada and California to bolster the candidate's flagging campaign.

Despite an impressive launch and an encouraging debate performance in the Democrats' first debate in June, Harris' numbers have been moving down at a steady rate.

Harris insisted Wednesday that she has always felt like an underdog in this race. Unlike other candidates, she pointed out, she had not run for president before and did not have a long donor list from which to draw. She also said she didn’t have enough money to throw $10 million of her own funds into the campaign to give herself a boost.

Although she doesn't stress it on the campaign trail, Harris, whose late mother was from India and her father is from Jamaica, has privately acknowledged that voters have never had to vote for someone who looks like her. 

"I fully intend to win,” the Indian American candidate told reporters Wednesday night before speaking at a house party in Newton. “It is not going to be easy — I knew that from day one, and I made that very clear from day one.”

After the June debate, Harris was polling second to frontrunner former Vice President Joe Biden. In the newest national poll released by USA Today/Suffolk on Wednesday, Harris garnered only 3% of support.

It's unfortunate that Harris has had to put all her chips in Iowa. Iowa and New Hampshire are among the least racially diverse states in the nation. A strong third place finish would actually be a victory for a woman of color. She needs to do well in one of those two states before Nevada with an influential and active Asian American electorate; followed by South Carolina where African American voters will likely swing the state towards Biden.

But that won't be easy. According to the latest survey in Iowa, Harris is polling at only 3%, far below the four white candidates -- Joe Biden, 18%; Elizabeth Warren, 17%; Pete Buttigeig, 13%; Bernie Sanders, 9% -- and just a step ahead of Amy Klobuchar, Tulsi Gabbard, Andrew Yang and Cory Booker. 

Even in her home state of California, Harris numbers fell from 19% in July to 8% in the new poll by Public Policy Institute, behind Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts (23%), former Vice President Joe Biden (22%) and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont (21%) are now tied as the leaders in the field among the state's likely voters. 

So far, Biden, Warren, Sanders, Buttigieg, Harris, and Yang have qualified for November’s debate, as have Senators Klobuchar and Booker, and billionaire businessman Tom Steyer. Gabbard, former Texas representative Beto O’Rourke and former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro have reached the donor threshold but have not yet amassed enough polls to qualify.

After the USA Today poll numbers came out, Harris tweeted, “Nothing worth fighting for is easy. Making history isn’t easy. Defending justice isn’t easy. We do it because it matters—and we intend to win.”

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