Harris, Deemed “Eligible,” Likely to Receive Democrat Presidential Nomination

by Sharon Rondeau

(Aug. 1, 2024) — On July 26, NPR’s Stephen Fowler reported a revised nominating process for the Democrat 2024 presidential candidate following the withdrawal of Joe Biden from the race on July 21.

“When will Kamala Harris be the official Democratic presidential nominee?” Fowler’s article is titled.

“Democrats have approved rules for an abbreviated nominating contest to replace President Biden at the top of the ticket this fall ahead of the party’s convention in August,” Fowler wrote. “Any challengers to Vice President Harris would have until July 27 to declare their candidacy, and until July 30 to prove their eligibility, with a virtual vote on the nomination coming as early as next Thursday, Aug. 1.”

In this instance, “eligibility” hinged on the number of pledged delegates. Shortly after Biden’s withdrawal and endorsement of Harris, his delegates largely followed suit, giving Harris the 1,976 delegates required to secure the nomination.

On Tuesday morning, CBS News reported, “Starting this Thursday, delegates in the Democratic Party will hold a virtual vote to select their new nominee. Vice President Kamala Harris will be running unopposed, since no other candidate met the requirements to qualify.”

On Thursday morning ABC News wrote:

A virtual voting process kicks off on Thursday morning to formally designate Vice President Kamala Harris the official presidential nominee of the Democratic Party.

Harris was already deemed the presumptive nominee by the Democratic National Committee on Tuesday after she emerged from a process, laid out by the party’s Rules Committee, as the only qualified candidate.

The final results will not be announced until Monday evening, the article states.

The 2024 Democrat National Convention (DNC) begins on August 19. An early roll-call vote was scheduled prior to the event because of an Ohio law which had required the names of all presidential nominees for placement on the state ballot by August 7.

The Ohio legislature subsequently changed the law “to accommodate Democrats’ mid-August convention in Chicago,” The Columbus Dispatch reported July 21/22.

Questions about Harris’s constitutional eligibility have arisen since late 2017, when then-constituent Gary Wilmott, having learned Harris, whose parents were in the U.S. on student visas when at the time of her birth, would likely run for president in 2020, telephoned the then-U.S. senator to ask if her parents were U.S. citizens when she was born in Oakland, CA on October 20, 1964.

Harris’s mother, Shyamala Gopalan, hailed from India, while her father, Donald J. Harris, was from Jamaica. The latter became a U.S. citizen in 1981, long after the birth’s of daughters Kamala and Maya.

Article II, Section 1, clause 5 of the U.S. Constitution mandates that the president be at least 35 years of age, 14 years a resident in the country, and a “natural born Citizen,” a term the Founders did not define but which is reserved for the president and commander-in-chief alone.

Absent a meaningful response from Harris’s staff, Wilmott told us, he sent her a formal letter in which he wrote, in part:

Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 mandates that a president be a NATURAL-born citizen, which you clearly are not. At the time of your birth, BOTH of your parents were citizens of foreign countries, so your birth in California makes you at best a NATIVE-born citizen (anchor baby?) under the prevailing view of the 14th Amendment. Lest you think that I have Republican bias I would also point out that presidential wannabes Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio also fail to meet this higher standard of citizenship. Their campaigns were fraudulent and in clear violation of the U.S. Constitution.

As we reported, Wilmott never received a response, nor did this writer to a similar inquiry made through Harris’s website.

Some constitutional scholars and American citizens believe the Article II, Section 1, clause 5 “natural born Citizen” term signifies a person born in the United States to U.S.-citizen parents, a higher level of allegiance than the “citizen” requirement the Founders stipulated for U.S. senators and representatives in Article I.

Some have supported the view that the term requires U.S.-citizen parents without regard to birthplace, while others believe birthplace only is the determining factor.

It is nearly universally understood a person born in a foreign country to foreign-citizen parents is ineligible, as in past years such individuals attempting to gain access to the presidential ballot have been disqualified by various secretaries of state.

However, some secretaries of state have permitted naturalized citizens’ names or those of legal residents, on presidential ballots. On the federal level, the FEC has said it has “no jurisdiction” to prevent any candidate, eligible or not, from raising money.

The Wikipedia entry for Nicaraguan-born journalist Róger Calero states:

In 2004, Róger Calero was the SWP candidate for President of the United States and received 3,689 votes,^[5] with Arrin Hawkins running for vice president. Because he is not a natural born citizen of the United States, Calero is ineligible to become U.S. president under the United States Constitution, meaning that even had he won the election, he would not have been permitted to serve, and so James Harris, the Socialist Workers’ Party presidential candidate from 2000, stood in on the ticket in nine states where Calero could not be listed, receiving 7,102 additional votes.^[6]

In 2006, Róger Calero appeared on the ballot in New York as the Socialist Workers Party candidate for US Senate. He received 6,967 votes.^[7]

Róger Calero again ran for President of the United States representing the SWP in the 2008 presidential election, together with Alyson Kennedy for vice-president.^[1] Again, James Harris stood in for Calero in several states.^[8] In the 2008 presidential election, Calero was on the ballot in five states, where he received 7,209 votes. Coupled with the 2,424 votes received in the five states where Harris was on the ballot.^[9]

The 1804 ratification of the 12th Amendment requires vice-presidential candidates to meet the same eligibility criteria as presidential contenders and that they not be citizens of the same state.

In October 2020, constituent Jeffrey Harrison wrote to then-Pennsylvania U.S. Senator Pat Toomey to express his doubts about Harris’s vice-presidential eligibility, in response to which Toomey claimed “immigrant parents” did not preclude a person from being a “natural born Citizen.”

In March 2015, Texas U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, who was born in Canada, announced his presidential candidacy. In November that year, then-U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson (D) declared if Cruz were to win the Republican nomination, he would challenge his eligibility on the basis that with a birth in Canada, he is “ineligible.”

As was reported by The Hill, Cruz claimed because he was born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada to a U.S.-citizen mother who was an “American citizen by birth,” he was constitutionally eligible to be president of the United States.

Days after Cruz’s declaration of candidacy, former U.S. Solicitors General Paul Clement (R) and Neal Katyal (D) published an essay now widely cited by artificial intelligence (AI) sources claiming the Founders’ “refreshingly clear” definition of “natural born Citizen” would have included anyone who was “a U.S. citizen from birth with no need for naturalization” (p. 4).

“Thus, an individual born to a U.S. citizen parent — whether in California or Canada or the Canal Zone — is a U.S. citizen from birth and is fully eligible to serve as President if the people so choose,” they concluded.

In 1862, Rep. John Bingham (R-OH), considered the leading author of the 14th Amendment ratified six years later, said on the House floor, “…All from other lands, who, by the terms of your laws and a compliance with their provisions become naturalized, are adopted citizens of the United States; all other persons born within the Republic, of parents owing allegiance to no other sovereignty, are natural-born citizens.”

The 14th Amendment, which states, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States” is often conflated with the”natural born Citizen” clause even though it does not address the constitutional term and was ratified more than a century and a half after the adoption of the Constitution in March 1789.

Updated 3:27 p.m. EDT.