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Democratic National Convention delegates, including those from New Hampshire, began voting virtually on Thursday to formally select their presidential nominee, with Vice President Kamala Harris facing no opposition.
NH Democratic Party Chairman Ray Buckley will lead the state’s 39-member delegation at the convention, which will be held Aug. 19-22 at the United Center in Chicago.
“The historic nature of the vice president’s candidacy has inspired many young people, people of color, women — inspired a lot of good folks,” Buckley said in an interview Thursday, noting that donors and volunteers have flocked to her campaign.
“Her enthusiasm for our values and for the country is infectious. And that’s something many in the country need to feel.”
Buckley said he expects the joy and enthusiasm at the convention will rival those held in 2008, when Barack Obama was the nominee, and 1992, when Bill Clinton got the nod.
“Certainly nobody has done the job better than Joe Biden, but there is a certain amount of energy and excitement around Kamala Harris’ candidacy,” he said.
Biden, 81, dropped out of the race on July 21 and endorsed Harris, 59.
“That day was a day of kind of shock in a way,” said former NH Sen. Melanie Levesque of Brookline, a delegate and a candidate for the 5th N.H. Executive Council District, which takes in a number of Monadnock Region towns.
“But I thought, ‘If anyone, she would be the best choice because she has been living it for four years. The next day it was excitement. It was elation. It all sunk in,” she said.
Biden’s decision to stand down came at the urging of many Democratic officials after his disastrous performance in a CNN debate with Republican nominee Donald Trump on June 27 in Atlanta.
Levesque said that with Harris’ background as a district attorney in San Francisco and attorney general in California, she will be able to make effective arguments against Trump.
Harris, who is Black and the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants, would be the first woman to be elected president.
“I think all of us are proud of her as a woman, as a fighter,” said Levesque, who in 2018 became the first Black person to be elected to the NH Senate.
“And there’s something about being, if you ask me, a Black woman, because I think you are always in a position where you have to stand up for yourself, stand up for your family.”
Levesque said she expects to hear Harris continue to emphasize reproductive rights on the campaign trail as a point of difference from Trump, whose U.S. Supreme Court nominees overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 ruling that found the Constitution protected abortion rights.
Republicans have criticized Biden and Harris for not doing more to stem illegal immigration, which has increased dramatically over the past few years. But Levesque counters that Republicans in Congress scuttled a bipartisan immigration reform measure after Trump opposed it.
The GOP has been criticizing the Biden-Harris administration for the high inflation that has occurred on their watch.
And some Republicans have also been critical about the process for putting Harris at the top of the Democratic ticket.
NH Sen. Tim Lang, R-Sanbornton, noted in a July 23 post on X that Biden received millions of votes in primaries, including in New Hampshire where he won a write-in campaign after opting not to be on the official primary ballot because of an election scheduling dispute.
He said Democratic party leaders could have chosen to have an open convention, where various voices could be heard, rather than deciding to make Harris the nominee “with no voter input, boxing out all other Democratic party contenders.
“Do you really think they will listen to voters if they get in office, or ignore them?”
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