NEW YORK — Former Vice President Kamala Harris announced on Friday morning that she “might” consider a third presidential campaign in 2028. But if she does seek the White House, some black voters are hesitant that she will succeed.
“I might,” Harris said in a fireside chat with Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network convention when asked if she would jump into the 2028 race. “I am thinking about it.”
Her comments came amid a packed crowd of attendees, mostly of African American descent, who were delighted with the announcement and had been urging her to “run again.”
NAN crowd cheers on Kamala Harris to “run again!” pic.twitter.com/GuYN5GFsaY
— Mabinty Quarshie
(@MabintyQ) April 10, 2026
Yet, in several interviews with conference attendees, the conversation was more nuanced about whether Harris should run after her 107-day sprint against President Donald Trump in 2024 resulted in her losing all seven battleground states and the popular vote.
“I thought it was a good idea the first time. I’m not so sure about this time,” Caiphia Rolle, an 83-year-old reverend from New York City, told the Washington Examiner.
Rolle pointed to Harris’s role as the first woman vice president in the nation’s history as part of her hesitation.
“She is still a woman, not just a black woman, but a woman,” she said.
Both Harris and former two-time Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton lost campaigns for the White House. No woman has broken the glass ceiling of ascending to the White House, which has dampened some of the enthusiasm among Democrats.
“Do I think she should run? Absolutely,” said Torkwase Sekou, a 64-year-old retired judge from New Jersey. But she conceded it may be hard for Harris to convince voters to support a woman for president again.
“The same issue I have is even here at NAN, as much as I find that this is a progressive organization, we are not backing women, specifically black women,” Sekou said.
One black female attendee, who requested anonymity to speak freely, claimed that Gov. Wes Moore (D-MD) would fare better in the 2028 race than Harris. The attendee compared Moore, Maryland’s first black governor, to former President Barack Obama.
“Non-black people would probably be more supportive of a black male than a black woman, unfortunately,” said the attendee, who said they are a registered Democrat. “It looks like, from the votes that she received, that getting behind a black woman for president is just really hard, but at least we’ve already had a black man president before, so maybe people might get more behind him than a woman again.”
Obama controversially criticized black men in 2024 for not supporting Harris over Trump, suggesting the decision was because of sexism.
“I’ve got a problem with that,” Obama said in Pittsburgh in October 2024 about lagging support for Harris. “Because part of it makes me think — and I’m speaking to men directly — part of it makes me think that, well, you just aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president, and you’re coming up with other alternatives and other reasons for that.”
Trump nearly doubled his support among black voters between 2020 and 2024, according to the Pew Research Center. In 2024, he won 15% of the black vote, up from 8% in 2020, although 83% of black voters voted for Harris. Trump made inroads with black men, with 21% backing him in 2024, up from 12% in 2020, and Hispanic men, with 50% backing him in 2024, up from 39% in 2020.
Moore, a possible 2028 candidate, told the Washington Examiner in a press gaggle that Democrats “need to do more than just tell black people they’re appreciated” in order to win back their vote in 2026, 2028, and beyond.
“I think you actually need to appreciate them,” he said. “We’ve got to focus on pathways to work, wages, and wealth. We’ve got to make sure that we’re getting people into a workforce, that we’re raising people’s wages, and you have to give them the chance to own more than they owe and pass something off to their children besides debt.”
Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), another 2028 hopeful, also commented that Latino men, who shifted toward Trump in 2024, want to be able to buy, build, earn, and have a lawmaker who fights for them in office.
“I think if we do those four things, then we get the victory,” he told the NAN crowd on Thursday.
Some black voters claimed that if Harris does run again, black men will vote for her, citing their disappointment with Trump’s leadership in his second year in office.
James Bugg, an 83-year-old New York retiree, dismissed claims that black men would not vote for Harris if she runs again.
“I don’t believe that,” he said. “Again, look at the choice. Look where we are. Look where we are as a nation. I know she feels that had she won the election, we wouldn’t be going through what we’re going through now.”
Support for Harris among the NAN crowd was strong, with hundreds of attendees lining up hours before she addressed the convention. A RealClearPolitics poll composite also shows Harris leading other Democrats by an average of 7 points in a hypothetical 2028 primary.
“There may be some other candidates that, you know, have the ability to serve, but I don’t think they compare to how I feel about Harris,” said Leonard Killings, a 66-year-old pastor from Cleveland, Ohio.
“Kamala has more than paid her dues,” said Sekou, also a member of Harris’s sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha. “She’s had every possible position that any man before her has had. From vice president to attorney general, her practice as a lawyer in California, and her continued work with the community, she has not slowed down, even out of office.”
KAMALA HARRIS CONSIDERING 2028 PRESIDENTIAL RUN: ‘I AM THINKING ABOUT IT’
Other Democrats told the Washington Examiner they wouldn’t give up on seeing another history-defining president in their lifetime.
“It’s time for a woman president,” said Jerome Williams, a 71-year-old minister at Bethany Baptist church in Brooklyn. “It doesn’t necessarily have to be Kamala. It can be Gov. (Kathy) Hochul (D-NY).”
