presidential run

WASHINGTON — Kamala Harris isn’t ruling out another run for the White House.

In an interview with the BBC posted Saturday, Harris said she expects a woman will be president in the coming years, and it could “possibly” be her.

“I am not done,” she said.

The former vice president said she hasn’t decided whether to mount a 2028 presidential campaign. But she dismissed the suggestion that she’d face long odds.

“I have lived my entire career a life of service, and it’s in my bones. And there are many ways to serve,” she said. “I’ve never listened to polls.”

Harris has recently given a series of interviews accompanying the September release of her book “107 Days.” It looks back on her experience replacing then-President Biden as the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee after he dropped out of the race, in an election she lost to Republican Donald Trump.

In an interview with the Associated Press this month, Harris, 60, also made clear that running again in 2028 is still on the table. She said she sees herself as a leader of the party, including in countering Trump and preparing for the 2026 midterms.

Meanwhile, political jockeying among Democrats for the 2028 presidential contest appears to be playing out even earlier than usual.

Several potential candidates are already taking steps to get to know voters in key states, including California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Fremont) and Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear. Potentially 30 high-profile Democrats could ultimately enter the primary.

Gov. Gavin Newsom will spend two days next week in rural South Carolina, fueling speculation that the California Democrat is laying the groundwork for a 2028 presidential run.

During the visit Tuesday and Wednesday, Newsom will make stops in eight rural counties that are among the state’s “most economically challenged and environmentally vulnerable,” the South Carolina Democratic Party said Thursday.

The chair of the state Democratic Party, Christale Spain, said in a statement that Newsom’s tour through the Pee Dee, Midlands and Upstate regions was aimed at showing rural voters in areas that had been “hollowed out by decades of Republican control” that “they aren’t forgotten.”

Newsom’s visit is also aimed at a state that will be among the first to have a Democratic Party primary in 2028. But Lindsey Cobia, a Newsom senior political advisor, denied that the governor is laying the groundwork for a presidential run.

Cobia said Newsom is “squarely focused” on helping Democrats win back the U.S. House of Representatives in 2026 and on “sounding the alarm about how rural families and communities requesting disaster relief are being left behind by the Trump administration.”

Newsom’s tour with the South Carolina Democrats, dubbed “On the Road With Governor Newsom,” will include stops in Marion, Chesterfield, Marlboro, Laurens, Pickens, Oconee, Kershaw and Florence counties. The Post and Courier reported that Newsom’s schedule would include stops in small settings such as cafes, coffee shops, community centers and churches.

The tour will take Newsom to some of the state’s reddest counties. Seven of the eight counties Newsom is scheduled to visit went for President Trump in November, including two where he garnered 75% of the vote.

The South Carolina trip is one of several overtures that Newsom has made to Southern voters in recent years. He stumped for then-President Biden in South Carolina in 2024. In 2023, he faced off in a highly publicized debate with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. And in 2022, he bought ads in Texas and Florida excoriating their governors for their stances on gun violence and abortion.

Newsom isn’t the only California Democrat visiting South Carolina this month.

U.S. Rep Ro Khanna (D-Fremont) of Silicon Valley will be holding town halls in the Palmetto State on July 19 and 20 in partnership with the advocacy organization Protect Our Care, which has been mobilizing voters in swing House districts against the planned Republican cuts to Medicaid.