Harris readies herself for biggest moment of her political life

By Kevin Liptak, Jeff Zeleny and MJ Lee, CNN

Chicago (CNN) — Vice President Kamala Harris prepared for the highest-profile moment of her political life from a hotel suite in downtown Chicago, readying herself for an opportunity to turn the swell of momentum on which she arrived at the Democratic National Convention this week into a movement that propels her into the Oval Office.

The enormous stakes are not lost on Harris, who has been thinking about her speech for several weeks. From nearly the moment President Joe Biden removed himself from the top of the Democratic ticket, she has been formulating in her mind the argument she hopes to make on the final night of the convention.

Harris has never been regarded as one of the party’s master speechmakers. Yet her prosecutorial elocution and distillation of policy into understandable terms has helped her galvanize massive crowds since launching her candidacy less than a month ago.

Harris has been vice president for more than three years, but advisers believe Americans are unaware of large parts of her biography. All week in Chicago, pieces of her background have been sprinkled into one speech after another, with her campaign hoping to help define her on its terms – as a prosecutor, a fighter, a daughter of a single middle-class mother and more.

She is expected to hit those touch points and more in her address Thursday.

According to several Democratic aides and others involved in her speech preparation, Harris has refined the text extensively, working in part from the stump speech she delivers, almost verbatim, at her campaign rallies. At the Park Hyatt Chicago, where she is staying this week, she has practiced at length and consulted with aides and family members in refining a speech meant to act as a high-profile introduction to American voters.

Since arriving in Chicago on Sunday evening, Harris has spent the daytime hours behind closed doors, working with her team on the address. She emerged on Monday to attend the first night of the convention and Tuesday evening to fly to Milwaukee for a campaign rally.

On Wednesday, she joined Biden on a phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as negotiators in the Middle East worked to salvage talks toward a hostage and ceasefire deal – a reminder of the day job she must now balance as she formally assumes the Democratic nomination.

But mostly, she has been consulting her team, which includes speechwriters but also senior advisers such as her chiefs of staff Lorraine Voles and Sheila Nix, as well as family members such as her husband, Doug Emhoff.

Since the day Biden extinguished his presidential bid a month ago, Harris’ convention speech has been an almost daily focus, with time built into her schedule to lay out themes of the address to a small circle of advisers.

Adam Frankel, who has worked since 2021 as an adviser to the vice president, has taken a leading role in writing her address. Frankel, 43, was on the speechwriting team for former President Barack Obama and spent years studying the historic speeches of John F. Kennedy while he worked as a researcher for Ted Sorensen, a longtime confidant and wordsmith for the late president.

“This notion that eloquence has a real role in public life, that eloquence can mobilize people to bring about real change, is something that obviously is one of his great contributions and something we’re trying to live up to,” Frankel once told an audience at the Kennedy Library.

A guidepost for Harris’ remarks can be found in several of her major speeches over the years, aides said, including her presidential announcement in 2019. She is not known to dwell on her own history-making potential but rather allow others to tread that ground for her.

“If I have the honor of being your president, I will tell you this: I am not perfect. Lord knows, I am not perfect,” she told supporters back in January 2019. “But I will always speak with decency and moral clarity and treat all people with dignity and respect. I will lead with integrity. And I will speak the truth.”

In the final hours before Thursday’s prime-time speech, Harris’ focus has largely been on perfecting her delivery, sources said, by trying to anticipate how the audience will receive and feel each line. This week also provided ample opportunity for Harris to spend time with her family – including members of her husband’s family – who have descended on Chicago for the political festivities.

Former Louisiana Rep. Cedric Richmond, a close adviser, said even Harris views her Thursday night speech as “her introduction to America in her own voice.”

Asked what main message Harris would hope to deliver to Americans with her acceptance speech, Richmond said: “That she cares about them and that it’s not about her and it’s about them.”

“Her main goal is to let the American people know she will wake up every day fighting for them,” he said.

Brian Brokaw, who managed Harris’ campaign for California attorney general and has advised her for years, said he sees the vice president’s objective Thursday night as relatively straightforward.

“Her task is to show the nation the Kamala Harris that many voters don’t yet know, and through her words, make clear as day the stark contrast between the positive, unifying Harris-Walz vision and the doom and gloom of the Trump -Vance ticket,” Brokaw said.

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