DNC delegates face unprecedented role of choosing nominee after Biden drops out

Dee Dawkins-Haigler had just left church in Lithonia, Ga., on Sunday and was sitting down to lunch when her phone suddenly erupted with a rapid fire of text messages, one after the other, so many she could barely keep up.

They were messages from other Democratic National Convention delegates, mostly fellow Black women, reacting to the news: President Biden was ending his 2024 campaign and had endorsed Vice President Harris to replace him.

She was in disbelief. Confused. Let down. Regretful. “Totally blindsided.” Angry at fellow Democrats for, as she sees it, bullying Biden out of the race. And already feeling tremendous pressure about her upcoming role.

Dawkins-Haigler is one of almost 4,000 DNC delegates who were chosen to represent the more than 14 million Democratic primary voters who cast ballots supporting Biden as the nominee. But with him stepping aside, those delegates are now free to vote for whomever they want - which Dawkins-Haigler said puts them in “a terrible position.” She plans to follow Biden’s wishes and signed a petition supporting Harris as the nominee. But she worries that the first Black woman candidate for president will face insurmountable racism and sexism, then be blamed by the same party leaders who pushed Biden out of the race.

[Kamala Harris has a career of comebacks. She has just over 100 days to do it again.]

And in a year when Democrats have made protecting democracy a cornerstone of their attack against former president Donald Trump, Dawkins-Haigler worries that the process of replacing Biden after voters chose him would not only divide Democrats but raise legal and ethical questions that could prompt chaos in the final months of the presidential campaign.

“I’ve never seen this type of confusion in the ninth inning, because that’s where we are. We are in the bottom of the ninth, and for us to switch out … it’s scary to me,” said Dawkins-Haigler, 54, a former Georgia state representative and an ordained minister who lives in Stonecrest, Ga. “Biden was duly elected by the American people to be the Democratic nominee. Now we are going to go in now and scuttle all of that and try to coalesce around one person … We just don’t have time for this.”

Delegates to party conventions have long played a mostly ceremonial role in the process of selecting a presidential nominee, but now Democrats are embarking on something historic and unprecedented - replacing the top of the ticket with a little more than 100 days until the election. Party leaders have made clear they would like to avoid the chaos of several candidates vying for the nomination at the convention. But because Harris was not chosen by voters in this year’s primaries and caucuses, her elevation could open her up to accusations that she did not earn the nomination through a democratic process.

Although the process of replacing a nominee is allowed under party rules, some Democrats worry that the appearance of being undemocratic threatens to undermine the party’s principles.

“There has not really been a historical precedent for this, and I think a fair and open process is critical both for the tens of millions of Democratic voters who turned out, but also for the perception of voters everywhere,” said Ryan Morgan, a delegate from Virginia who doesn’t want to immediately anoint Harris. “We have a primary process, we have a democratic process, and having [delegates] picking someone off the outgoing president’s opinion is not what people are used to.”

Already, Trump and other Republicans have called this effort to replace Biden undemocratic, and a conservative think tank has threatened to challenge a new nominee in the courts - an effort that election lawyers say will undoubtedly fail but could help cement in voters’ minds that the new nominee was not directly chosen by voters.

Throughout the campaign, Democrats have assailed Trump as a threat to democracy because he has denied the results of the 2020 election and refused to concede. But now, Trump is trying to use the potential elevation of Harris to flip the script.

“The Democrats pick a candidate, Crooked Joe Biden, he loses the Debate badly, then panics, and makes mistake after mistake, is told he can’t win, and decide they will pick another candidate, probably Harris. They stole the race from Biden after he won it in the primaries - A First! These people are the real THREAT TO DEMOCRACY!” Trump posted Monday on his social media platform Truth Social.

And Trump’s running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), told supporters at a rally that Democratic elites “got in a smoke filled-room and decided to throw Joe Biden overboard.”

“That is not how it works. That is a threat to democracy, not the Republican Party, which is fighting for democracy every single day,” Vance said.

Before Biden dropped out, he repeatedly noted that voters had selected him, not anyone else, as the nominee.

“I’m the nominee of this party because 14 million Democrats like you voted for me in the primaries,” Biden said at a Detroit campaign event on July 12. “You made me the nominee, no one else. Not the press, not the pundits, not the insiders, not donors, you the voters. You decided, no one else, and I’m not going anywhere.”

It’s unclear whether the delegates will select Biden’s replacement in a virtual roll call in early August or wait until their convention in Chicago that begins Aug. 19. Before Biden left the race, Democrats planned to certify his nomination before the convention, citing concerns about ballot access deadlines. DNC leaders will decide Wednesday whether to go ahead with the early vote and when that would happen. Senior Democrats have said they’d like to have the nomination wrapped up for Harris before the convention. To that end, party leaders are scrambling behind the scenes to shore up support for her.

Harris spent more than 10 hours calling more than 100 party leaders on Sunday, telling them she plans to earn the nomination in her own right, according to a person familiar with the vice president’s actions who discussed the private calls on the condition of anonymity. That night, all 50 state Democratic Party chairs affirmed their support for Harris.

More than 1,000 delegates have pledged to back Harris, according to a survey by the Associated Press, signaling that she could soon lock up the committed support of the 1,976 delegates needed to become the nominee. Several state parties - including those in Florida, North Carolina, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania - have announced that all or almost all of their delegates support Harris.

Many delegates have argued that picking Harris is the most democratic option because she was on the 2024 ticket that primary voters chose, which meant they already supported her as next in line for the presidency.

Roberto Reveles, 91, a delegate from Arizona, said it is “perfectly fair” to swap Harris in for Biden.

“I will, in good conscience, be able to vote for the person that the president himself delegated as his successor, in case of an emergency,” Reveles said.

Tennessee delegate Megan Lange, 33, added: “It makes sense that our vote for Harris as VP would pivot to a vote for Kamala Harris as president.”

No matter who the Democrats chose as their nominee, there is nothing undemocratic about the process of replacing Biden on the ticket, said Rick Hasen, an election law expert and professor at the University of California at Los Angeles.

“The situation we have here - the winner of the primary process - decided that he cannot serve. This is the party’s democratic process for handling such a situation,” he said. “It would be the same thing as if a candidate died … there’s nothing remotely undemocratic about it.”

But Republicans are eager to sow doubt about that.

Mike Howell, executive director of the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project, wrote in an early April memo that if Democrats tried to replace Biden, “there is the potential for pre-election litigation in some states that would make the process difficult and perhaps unsuccessful.”

After Biden’s announcement, Howell said the conservative think tank was “deep in the litigation planning stages” and pointed to an Oversight Project post on X: “We have been preparing for this moment for months. Many in the media tried discrediting us. Who is laughing now? No more ‘make it up as you go’ elections Stay tuned …”

Election law experts say conservatives don’t have a case because Biden was not yet the official nominee when he dropped out and the process allows for delegates to select a nominee.

“We have a representational democracy,” said Trevor Potter, president of the Campaign Legal Center and a Republican former chairman of the Federal Election Commission. “These delegates were elected by 14 million voters … Those delegates are still there, they’re still entitled to select a nominee, and now it’s going to be someone else.”

That nominee, Potter added, would have the same right to appear on ballots around the nation as Biden would have had.

“I think it’s ridiculous for them to say the election is being stolen, as candidates are able to make their own decisions about whether or not they want to remain on the ballot,” said Karthik Soora, a delegate from Texas.

While Dawkins-Haigler is nervous about the path ahead, she said she is also hopeful the party will now unite to take on Trump - and soon.

“One thing I can say is, we are full of resolve. We are a strong party. We can bounce back from a lot of things,” she said. “We’re always put in the position of having to save democracy. And we’ll do it again.”

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Bailey reported from Atlanta, and Wingett Sanchez reported from Phoenix. Erin Cox, Alice Crites, Molly Hennessy-Fiske, Meryl Kornfield, Patrick Marley, Nicole Markus, Ence Morse, Tyler Pager, Sabrina Rodriguez, Aaron Schaffer, Michael Scherer, Gregory Schneider and Laura Vozzella contributed to this report.