Jaime Harrison, outgoing DNC chief, says more Democrats “need to pause” on being “rigid”

As his time as chairman of Democratic National Committee comes to a close after a difficult election cycle, Jaime Harrison hopes people in his party come to “understand that you’ve got to be more elastic than rigid.” 

Harrison, who was picked by then-President Joe Biden to take over the role in 2021, said “Sometimes, we got folks that are very rigid. If you don’t have the right job, if you didn’t come from the right community, if you don’t say the right word, and then therefore you are x-ed out or you’re castigated.” 

“We need to pause on that. Let’s be a big tent, and let’s be an open tent and embrace more diversity, in terms of thought,” Harrison said. 

Harrison’s comments come as party leaders prepare to pick his successor Saturday during a meeting in Maryland. 

In a conversation ahead of the election to replace him, Harrison strongly defended Biden and stood by the lightning-fast process that saw then-Vice President Kamala Harris receive the support of DNC delegates and become the party’s new nominee after Biden ended his reelection bid last summer. 

Conscious that some in the party might consider a snap White House bid, Harrison said he had checked in with some of the “people who had expressed some interest down the road for running,” including governors. 

“Every single one of them said, ‘I’m not going to run. I’m supporting Kamala Harris.’ And it was almost like I was chasing the Kamala Harris calls, because they all said, ‘I just talked to the VP, and I have pledged my support to her,’” he said. 

Besides, Harrison believes party rules made any discussion of a short primary in the run-up to the Chicago convention impossible. 

“So you’re saying … after the primaries were done, then we should restart another primary process,” Harrison said. “How do you do that? Who’s going to pay for those primaries? Is the DNC supposed to pay for those primaries? Because, you know, primaries cost money, right?” 

When asked about Harris, the party’s 2024 nominee, Harrison said the former vice president should run again for the White House if she wants to. 

“If I didn’t believe Kamala Harris could win, I wouldn’t have worked as hard as I did to help her win this last time around,” he said. “When you look at politics, Donald Trump and Barack Obama are just enigmas in politics. I think they do something different to the electorate every time they run that you can’t counter, but then when they are not on the ballot, it’s almost like you go back to — the political gravity pulls people right back into it. That’s part of…how well we did in the [2022] midterms.”  

The party’s struggles in 2024, when enough voters sided with President Donald Trump and his far different vision for the country than the one espoused by Democrats, has created major questions about the path forward for the party. 

“I know in a 176-year history, people have written the epitaph of the Democratic Party a lot of times, and people are trying to write it again. But don’t sleep on this Democratic Party. What we have to do is to build on the infrastructure that we have built,” Harrison said. 

And while Democrats’ soul searching continues, Republicans in Washington have been taking a victory lap in the early days of Trump’s return to power. 

“We have seen the greatest political comeback in American history play out before our eyes. We needed to win four out of seven swing states. President Trump won all seven,” Republican National Committee chair Michael Whatley said earlier this month at a party event. “We needed to keep the popular vote close. President Trump won it by millions of votes. We needed to drive turnout with low propensity voters and engage with communities that Democrats have taken for granted for decades. We shattered every record, and we got our people to the polls.” 

Harrison led the DNC through a turbulent time in American politics. The party that holds the White House typically struggles in the midterms, but the move by the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade and end the federal right to an abortion became a catalyzing issue for Democrats in 2022. That year, Democrats were able to add to their narrow Senate majority while narrowly losing the House, despite GOP hopes for a major “red wave.”

The 2024 election cycle was filled with far starker challenges for Democrats. The party was defending Senate seats in the Republican-dominated states of Montana and Ohio while incumbents in battleground states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Nevada were also on the ballot. Concerns about Biden’s age had been building, though the overhauled slate of early primary states ushered in by Harrison and Biden, starting with Harrison’s home state of South Carolina holding the first national party sanctioned Democratic primary, helped insulate the incumbent from a major challenge. 

Yet concerns broke through in a major way after Biden’s disastrous June debate performance against Trump, leading to public calls within the party from elected leaders for Biden to end his reelection bid. After building pressure, Biden withdrew from the race and quickly endorsed Harris. Democrats rallied around Harris, who only had around 107 days between her entry into the race and Election Day.

The verdict from voters in November 2024 was a stinging setback for Democrats, who not only lost the White House to Trump once again and control of the Senate, but also failed to win back control of the House. That outcome left some congressional Democrats saying after the election that they should have called on Biden to leave the race sooner. 

“President Biden, as far as legacy, has many successes to point to,” Texas Rep. Lloyd Doggett told CBS News in November 2024 after the election. “But the most important success would have been had he stepped aside a year ago and given us a better chance of preventing Trump from coming back.”

Looming over the contest to replace Harrison as the leader of the DNC  is the sting from 2024’s losses and a Democratic Party brand that has eroded with key segments of voters. The leading contenders to replace Harrison include former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, Wisconsin Democratic Party Chairman Ben Wikler and Ken Martin, the leader of Minnesota’s arm of the Democratic Party. 

“The majority of Americans now believe the Republican Party best represents the interests of the working class and the poor, and the Democratic Party is the party of the wealthy and the elites,”  Martin wrote in his framework pitch for chair. “It’s a damning indictment on our party brand. We must be willing to dig deep and recenter the Democratic agenda to unite families across race, age, background, and class.” 

Harrison has decided to not endorse in the race to replace him. But he said Martin, the Minnesota Democrat, “would be one hell of a chair,” before adding that “there are a lot of good candidates who I think would do a really good job as chair, as well.” 

Harrison became nationally known in 2020 for his attempt to oust Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham in South Carolina’s Senate race. Despite losing, Harrison’s run showed progress for Democrats. While Graham had coasted to reelection by around 17 points in 2014, he defeated Harrison by a little over 10 points in the red state. 

But Harrison indicated earlier this week he would not be vying for public office again anytime soon. He’s eager to spend time with his family and also hopes to focus on rebuilding the South for the Democratic Party. 

But those aren’t the only reasons. 

Harrison said that over the years he had wanted to be the heir apparent to South Carolina U.S. Rep. James Clyburn and the seat the influential leader has held for decades, the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of Trump’s supporters and its aftermath has dampened those ambitions. 

“I still get goosebumps when I see that dome lit up over there,” Harrison said, sitting in the DNC building near the U.S. Capitol. “But to see what happened on January 6, and to see how folks have whitewashed that, particularly on the Republican side, to see the vitriol and the hatred in the body politic right now, is not something that I want to be a part of.” 

Alexandria Johnson and Anne Bryson contributed to this report.