Sen. Kamala Harris last went to South Carolina — a state that would factor heavily in her push for the nomination — in October 2018 to campaign ahead of the midterms. | Sait Serkan Gurbuz/AP Photo Elections Harris schedules first South Carolina visit

California Sen. Kamala Harris, who is all but certain to join the presidential race in the coming weeks, will make her first visit this year to an early nominating state on Jan. 25.

Harris will attend the 37th annual Pink Ice Gala in Columbia, S.C., a person familiar with her plans told POLITICO.


The event is hosted by the Gamma Nu Omega Chapter of the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. — as an undergraduate student at Howard University, Harris pledged AKA, and remains a popular figure in the sorority. She was greeted just this week by a rousing “skee-wee” at her book event in Washington.

Harris last went to South Carolina — a state that would factor heavily in her push for the nomination — in October to campaign ahead of the midterms. Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, who also visited the state in October, is scheduled to speak to a rally at the State House there on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the first major candidate to explore a run for president, has swung through Iowa already and will be in New Hampshire this weekend. And Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, who is also expected to launch soon, is staffing up her campaign and planning her first trip to Iowa.

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Harris is on a tour for her book, “The Truths We Hold,” that amounts to a soft presidential launch, with a stop tonight in New York, and followed by a swing though San Francisco and Los Angeles. The tour, which is accompanied by several TV and radio appearances, has provided her a chance to talk about her upbringing, family and career and show flashes of her personality in mostly lighthearted settings, as well as showcase how she might approach a challenge to President Donald Trump.

“My focus would be, if I were going to run, it would not be Donald Trump,” Harris said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

“It would be the voters and the people of our country. They deserve, I believe, to hear from anyone who wants to be a leader. They deserve to hear from any one of us who puts ourselves out there how we are going to be relevant to their lives. And I believe that should be the focus of the conversation,” she added. “And to the extent that it would invariably bring up what this administration has done or not done, of course that is relevant.”

While Harris didn’t tip her hand on an announcement, she didn’t skip a beat when asked why she would want to be president, a question host Joe Scarborough noted, that has doomed past candidates.

“Because I believe our country wants and needs leadership that provides a vision of the future of our country in which everyone can see themselves,” she answered.

“Let’s start from that, and then think about what we need to do to speak to all of the people of our country, to ensure that we see them, to understand we don’t need to accept false choices in terms of how we approach public policy,” Harris added. “I'm a career prosecutor. I’ve spent my entire life, almost, focused on public safety.”

“We can do that and also focus on issues like what we need to do to build a healthy economy,” she said.

