Kamala Harris Will Not Run for California Governor in 2026

Kamala Harris, the former vice president, announced that she has decided not to run for California’s top office.

Former Vice President Kamala Harris will not run for governor of California next year, she announced on Wednesday, forgoing another campaign after her defeat in last year’s presidential election and ending months of speculation about whether she would enter the race.

“For now, my leadership — and public service — will not be in elected office,” Ms. Harris said in a statement.

“I look forward to getting back out and listening to the American people, helping elect Democrats across the nation who will fight fearlessly, and sharing more details in the months ahead about my own plans.”

Ms. Harris, a former U.S. senator and attorney general of California, had been exploring a run for the state’s top office since she returned home to Los Angeles in January. But she had done little to express enthusiasm for the job. She skipped large political events in the state, and never reached out to the leaders of major labor unions, which deliver valuable endorsements.

Ms. Harris had told friends and donors in recent months that she was weighing her options for the future — a run for governor next year, another run for president in 2028 or a career outside of elective office.

Forgoing the governor’s race means that Ms. Harris could potentially run for president in 2028, which would be her third such attempt after withdrawing from the 2020 contest and later losing to President Trump last year.

If Ms. Harris does run in 2028, she would face a competitive Democratic field, starting with a potential rival whom she has known well for decades, the state’s current governor, Gavin Newsom. He has elevated his national profile this year, including by launching a podcast and visiting South Carolina, a key primary state.

Mr. Newsom is finishing his second term and by law cannot run for a third, which opened the door for Ms. Harris and other possible candidates to run to succeed him.

Ms. Harris has spent the months since November largely out of the public eye, delivering a paid speech in Australia and appearing at weddings of some of her famous friends.

She was in England last week for the wedding of the Apple heiress Eve Jobs, whose mother, Laurene Powell Jobs, is a close friend. In June, she attended the wedding of Hillary Clinton’s top aide and the son of a Democratic megadonor. In May, she was spotted at the Met Gala in New York.

Her deliberations came during a summer of political turmoil in California, in which federal immigration raids and President Trump’s deployment of military troops disrupted life for many residents and put the state’s leading Democrats on the defensive. Ms. Harris weighed in selectively with a handful of statements on social media, but mostly stayed silent about the tumult unfolding in her state.

During that time, Ms. Harris was also largely absent from the broader Democratic discussions about the party’s future. While the party’s ambitious governors, members of Congress and various Biden administration officials have appeared on podcasts, toured the country and held town hall meetings in Republican districts, Ms. Harris has offered no explanation for why she lost the 2024 race, and she has not presented any beginnings of a road map for how Democrats might claw back power.

And while Ms. Harris won the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination by acclamation after President Joseph R. Biden Jr. ended his re-election bid a year ago, there is no indication that other Democrats would defer to her a second time.

Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, whom Ms. Harris chose as her running mate, has spent part of this year on his own personal apology tour, offering public and private explanations for why their ticket lost to Mr. Trump and how he and other Democrats can win back voters’ trust and affection.

Mr. Newsom has dissected the Democrats’ woes on his podcast, “This Is Gavin Newsom,” going as far as inviting conservative guests like Charlie Kirk and Steve Bannon to appear, and asking them why the Democratic Party suffered losses last year.

Though polling showed that Ms. Harris would have been the front-runner in the governor’s race, she would have faced difficult questions about how much she knew about President Biden’s decline and whether she participated in shielding his diminished health from the public.

Some Democrats in California, including activists at the party’s state convention two months ago, have said they did not want her to run for governor because they feared it would send a message to the rest of the nation that Democrats had not moved on from last year’s losses. Others felt that the office of governor was beneath Ms. Harris after she served as vice president.

Ms. Harris’s decision has opened the 2026 governor’s race to a field that is narrow in some respects and wide in others. The state’s electorate is overwhelmingly Democratic, and no Republican has won statewide office since 2006, when Arnold Schwarzenegger was re-elected governor and another Republican was elected as insurance commissioner.

Ms. Harris’s absence frees up major liberal donors and creates room for a relatively large field of well-known or deep-pocketed Democrats. Lesser-known candidates were waiting for her to make a decision so they could begin campaigning in earnest across a vast state with at least a half-dozen major media markets, in which the price tag for a successful effort can rival that of some national campaigns.

Candidates already in the race who are likely to benefit from her decision include Antonio Villaraigosa, a former Los Angeles mayor who ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2018 against Mr. Newsom, and Xavier Becerra, a California attorney general and secretary of health and human services in the Biden administration. Other contenders include Katie Porter, a former member of Congress from Orange County who lost the Democratic primary for Senate to Adam Schiff last year, and Eleni Kounalakis, the state’s lieutenant governor.

In California, Ms. Harris’s decision was widely viewed as unsurprising, and a sign that her heart was more with a national office than a statewide one.

Representative Sydney Kamlager-Dove, a California Democrat who has been friends with Ms. Harris for many years, said the former vice president believed that “California would be in good hands,” and that she would be more effective at the national level.

Mayor Karen Bass, a former congresswoman who was on Mr. Biden’s short list for the vice presidency along with Ms. Harris, said, “I have the utmost respect for her making a decision like that and will be very interested to see how she continues in public service.”

Mr. Villaraigosa said he understood Ms. Harris’s choice, even though “I lost a bet — I thought she was coming in.”

“Look, I’ve known her a long time and have respect for her and her decades of leadership and public service,” Mr. Villaraigosa said. “I don’t know why she decided not to run, but I think it has something to do with her continued commitment to serving at a national level. I think she’ll continue to be a powerful voice for justice and opportunity.”

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