Kamala Harris and a History of Vice Presidential Second Acts

Vice President Kamala Harris (D-CA)

One of the biggest questions in Democratic politics right now is what will Kamala Harris do next?  Harris, who ran for president in 2020, lost the primary, and then successfully won the vice presidency, wasn't supposed to be asking this question right now.  Just over a year ago, Harris was the heir presumptive to the 2028 nomination for the White House, the sitting vice president trying to valiantly save the Biden/Harris campaign.  But a few months later she was shoved into the shortest presidential race in decades for a major party candidate, and came up unsuccessful in 2024 when she pinch-hit for Joe Biden.

While Donald Trump (the exception to a lot of rules, and increasingly a lot of laws) successfully ran four years after losing the presidential election, generally failed presidential nominees do not get a second chance at the White House.  Recent presidential losers like Al Gore, Mitt Romney, & Hillary Clinton probably were still dreaming of the White House stationery when they conceded, but they didn't make a run, and while it's possible Harris will, I wonder if that time might've passed for her.  There is going to be a lot of pressure for Democrats to move on from the Obama/Biden years, and with most of the major figures of that era like Hillary Clinton & John Kerry nearing or entering their 80's, Harris is really the only plausible way to continue it...and I think the nation will be ready for her to step aside.  I also wonder if Harris, horrified by what Donald Trump is doing due to her inability to win the election (it was on the country too...but she has to carry it more than anyone), might not want the heat of potentially failing twice.

But that doesn't mean that she's done with politics.  Harris has put out feelers to run for Governor of California as a final chapter in her political career, and many insiders seem to think she'll make the plunge.  Were Harris to win, she'd be a heavy favorite for the office, and would be able to position herself as the leader of one of the world's largest economies, and also as a counterweight to the Trump administration in the largest state in the Union.  Her running, though, does bring up a question: how often to former Vice Presidents run for office after leaving the Naval Observatory?

I initially thought that this would be a pretty short list, given that former presidents almost never run for public office again.  While several went on to run for the White House again (not just Trump, but also Grover Cleveland, Teddy Roosevelt, Ulysses S. Grant, & Martin van Buren all made a play for the White House after losing or retiring), only three ran for public office again after leaving.  John Quincy Adams spent 17 years in the US House after his term as president, becoming the country's most famous abolitionist for a time (he also unsuccessfully ran for Governor & Senate while he was in the House).  John Tyler would serve on the Provisional Confederate Congress (and was elected to the Confederate House of Representatives but died before he could take office), forever destroying any sense of his legacy as the only former President to wholly support the Confederacy (even Franklin Pierce, who was deeply critical of Lincoln, didn't do that).  And finally there's Andrew Johnson, who would briefly serve in the US Senate in 1875 before his death from a stroke.

Vice President Walter Mondale (D-MN)

That's it-the top job is hard to get over, and taking another office is something that most politicians seem incapable of doing.  But the vice presidency, that's not the case.  Several former VP's would take on appointed positions, amongst them George M. Dallas, Charles G. Dawes, & Walter Mondale (who all became ambassadors), and Henry Wallace (a cabinet secretary).  But 11 vice presidents would run for public office (other than for POTUS) in the years following their time at #2.

The most common post-VP office to run for is the US Senate.  The world's most exclusive club comes with enough prestige that it doesn't feel like a "consolation prize."  John C. Calhoun served in the Senate twice after being VP (quitting briefly between the stints to become Secretary of State), while Hannibal Hamlin also did both, winning a Senate seat in 1869 (meaning he served alongside Lincoln's other VP Andrew Johnson in the Senate, and the two were actually sworn in standing next to each other), before becoming Ambassador to Spain as the coda on his career.  Hubert Humphrey spent most of the 1970's considering a second run for the White House from a vaulted place in the Senate (they invented the position of Deputy President Pro Tempore for him, an office no other person has held), and Alben Barkley died in the Senate after serving as Harry Truman's VP.  Perhaps the weirdest Senate sojourn for a VP was John C. Breckenridge, who did serve as Senator from Kentucky...before being forced out in shame when he joined the Confederacy, eventually serving as Secretary of War for the South.

Other former vice presidents took different tactics.  Harris would have Levi Morton, who became Governor of New York after being Benjamin Harrison's VP to model herself off of if she were to win the California governorship.  Meanwhile there's also Richard M. Johnson, who successfully sought a seat in the Kentucky House of Representatives before he died in 1850 just two weeks into his term.

Johnson, though, is also a cautionary tale: not all former vice presidents get glory when they run for a second act.  Johnson sought both a Senate seat and the Governor's mansion in Kentucky without victory before finally settling for the State House.  He's not alone.   Richard Nixon's famous "you won't have Nixon to kick around anymore" was not, as is frequently believed, said after his 1960 presidential loss, but instead his 1962 gubernatorial defeat to Pat Brown.  William A. Wheeler lost a Senate election in 1881, and 121 years later, Walter Mondale (asked to sit in for the late Paul Wellstone) became the most recent Vice President to lose when he lost a Senate election to Norm Coleman (making Mondale the only person in American history to lose an election in all 50 states).  Charles W. Fairbanks might be the oddest of all.  After serving as Teddy Roosevelt's VP during Roosevelt's second term, Fairbanks sought the Vice Presidency a second time in 1916, narrowly losing the office (and dying two years later).

All of this is to say, Harris is not unique, but instead would be joining a rich history if she were to run for an office after the vice presidency...even if she never again seeks the Oval Office.