In Durham Kamala Harris warns that the redistricting battle proves sometimes you have to play with fire to win.NH

Former Vice President Kamala Harris, reflecting on her truncated presidential campaign last year and sharing her thoughts on how her party should respond to an emboldened Trump administration, said Democrats should forget about having a fair fight.

Speaking to an audience of supporters Wednesday at the Durham Performing Arts Center, Harris drew laughs as she imitated those within the Democratic Party who she said complain that Republicans are “not playing fair.” Instead of worrying about how the party in control in Washington is operating, Harris said, Democrats should be responding in kind.

“They’re playing with fire, and we need to play with fire,” Harris said to loud cheers from the crowd.

As an example, Harris cited California Democrats’ plan to enact a new congressional map that could net their party five seats in the U.S. House, in retaliation to Texas Republicans redrawing their own map in August to give the GOP five additional seats ahead of next year’s midterm election. California’s map is on the ballot next month as a proposition measure that the state’s voters will have to approve for redrawn lines to take effect.

California’s efforts led North Carolina Republican legislative leaders to announce this week that GOP lawmakers here will take up their own redrawn map next week that could yield one new seat for Republicans.

Harris said that North Carolina is “state zero in terms of knowing…what that does in terms of skewing national representation and displacing whole populations of people that have a voice that should be heard by someone who is actually representative of that community.”

The former vice president’s comments about her home state come as other leaders in the party signal that Democrats should, and will, adopt an aggressive posture on mid-decade redistricting as a race appears to be underway in states controlled by each party to redraw maps to produce the most favorable district lines before the midterms.

Former President Barack Obama endorsed the effort underway in California this week, recording an ad encouraging voters there to approve their state’s new map on Nov. 4. Meanwhile, the party’s leader in the U.S. House, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, said Tuesday that Democrats are prepared to draw new maps in additional states.

“We are not going to let Republicans successfully rig the midterm elections,” Jeffries said, according to The Hill. “California is just the first Democratic state to respond. It will not be the last.”

Harris’ appearance in Durham was the latest stop of her nationwide tour in support of “107 Days,” her new memoir about her 2024 campaign.

Harris calls Roy Cooper one of the party’s ‘stars’

During the conversation on Wednesday, moderated by comedian Roy Wood Jr., Harris also urged voters in North Carolina to support former Gov. Roy Cooper in next year’s U.S. Senate race.

Cooper, who left the governor’s mansion at the end of last year after serving two terms, launched his campaign in July. He’s preparing to face off against Michael Whatley, former chair of the N.C. Republican Party and Republican National Committee, who is the favorite to win his party’s primary, thanks to backing from President Donald Trump and other GOP leaders.

In her book, Harris recalls that Cooper was among the first people she called in the hours after former President Joe Biden dropped out of the race, notified her, and went public with the news that he was ending his campaign, on July 21, 2024.

“Before you say anything, I’m all in,” Cooper told her, Harris wrote in the book.

Harris and Cooper have known each other for many years, having both served as attorneys general of their respective states at the same time. Harris was first elected as California attorney general in 2010, and was reelected in 2014. She served in that office until January 2017, when she was sworn in as the state’s next U.S. senator, replacing Barbara Boxer.

Cooper served four terms as North Carolina’s attorney general, winning his first race for the office in 2000, and winning reelection in 2004, 2008, and 2012. He successfully ran for governor in 2016, winning a second term in 2020.

In the early days of Harris’ fast-moving campaign last year, Cooper’s name was publicly floated as a potential running mate. But Cooper quickly took himself out of the running, something that Harris confirms in her book.

On Wednesday, Harris said Cooper is one of the “stars in the party” who Democrats can look to for candidates who can win important races and try to win back control of the U.S. Senate and House.

Harris mentioned U.S. Reps. Jasmine Crockett of Texas and Brittany Pettersen of Colorado as other up-and-coming “stars” in the party.

“Part of the conversation around Democrats right now, mostly coming from the pundits, (that) I find to be distracting, if not just not productive, (is) this whole savior complex,” Harris said. “Who’s the one? Who’s the one? When is the messiah coming?”

“No, we have so many stars, we have so many good people who are doing good work,” Harris said. “And if we spend full-time running around each other — ‘Where’s the star? Where’s the one? Where’s the one?’ — we’re not going to see what’s right in front of us.”