Vice President Kamala Harris, who accepts the Democratic presidential nomination at the Democratic National Convention here next week, is no stranger to Chicago.
When she started running for president in 2019 in a crowded Democratic primary field, Harris’ Illinois supporters were the best organized in the state.
Those originals — the “Illinois OGs for Kamala” — are throwing a champagne brunch on Monday, the first day of the convention, to help organize support for the Harris-Walz ticket.
More on the “OGs” below.
Through the years, Harris has been to the Chicago area many times — for official events, fundraising and even a heartfelt condolence call.
In April 2021, Harris visited the Brown Sugar Bakery on the South Side to spotlight a small Black- and woman-owned business. Harris stopped en route to Midway Airport after she toured a COVID-19 vaccination center organized by the Chicago Federation of Labor.
In June 2022, she was flying to Illinois on Air Force Two when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, ending federal protections for abortion rights. Harris started reading the decision as the plane headed toward Aurora Municipal Airport and tossed away the speech she planned to deliver in Plainfield on maternal health care issues to blast the ruling.
A few weeks later, Harris was back, for a speech to the National Education Association at McCormick Place. That was July 5, 2022, the day after the Highland Park parade massacre.
That night, Harris visited the traumatized North Shore suburb.
The Highland Park visit was not a surprise to the mayor of the suburb, Nancy Rotering, who Harris called on July 4 after the tragedy to ask how she could help.
Rotering was no stranger to Harris. She was part of a group of Illinois Democrats who had come together in 2019 to back the Harris 2020 presidential bid, building what at the time was the strongest primary operation in the state.
A few days ago I talked to members of the Harris 2020 Illinois leadership team in the wake of Kamala Harris resetting the 2024 political race after President Joe Biden dropped out.
That’s Rotering; Chicago City Clerk Anna Valencia; Rep. Bob Morgan, D-Highland Park; Illinois 2020 Harris campaign director Valerie Alexander, now a Harris campaign adviser; election law attorney Mike Kreloff; and Rep. Nikki Budzinski, D-Ill., who back then was a senior adviser to Gov. JB Pritzker.
If you wonder how campaigns get off the ground, well this is how it works.
Alexander recalled, “She was my first choice in the primary, and I reached out to her campaign and said how can I be helpful? And she called me back, which was really great, and she said, we could use, we could use your help.”
Kreloff met up with Alexander in a coffee shop and ended up helping organize the delegate slate.
“It was a very scrappy and mighty group of supporters,” Alexander said. “Passionate supporters, of her candidacy, and we worked tirelessly to get her delegates slated, to get her on the ballot, and to go to Iowa and to do all of the things that a campaign does in their early days.”
Rotering says she got involved because “I’ve been a big fan of Kamala’s work since she was the attorney general in California, and as she became senator, just following her stance on issues that mattered to me.”
Valencia said that when she met Harris at a campaign event, “I was sold. She was authentic. She was real. She was about supporting the women. She was one of the very few people I told I was pregnant.”
One of the people from Chicago who go back with Harris is Desiree Rogers, the chief executive of Black Opal, whose support for Harris started with the vice president’s first run for a California Senate seat.
John Rogers, the founder of Ariel Investments, also knows Harris from her Senate days. He is the chair of the Economic Opportunity Coalition, which was created by Harris, and a member of the Harris National Finance Committee.
Budzinski said she was sold on Harris in 2019 because of the “experience that she brings as a woman, a woman of color, I felt to be very strong and very compelling.”
Emhoff in Chicago Wednesday for 3 fundraisers
Second gentleman Doug Emhoff headlines two fundraisers in Chicago on Wednesday. The third is in Glencoe, organized by activists who are part of Invest to Elect, whose chair is Lauren Rosenthal. The group is hosting a convention brunch reception Aug. 21 with a slew of Democratic female members of the House and Senate.