WASHINGTON — Anxious liberals have held their fire as Vice President Kamala Harris tacks to the center, but recent calls from some allies that she part ways with a popular, progressive financial regulator if she wins the White House have sparked warnings from her party's left flank of a potential “out and out brawl."
For many in the progressive movement, the question of whether to keep Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan represents a pivotal question about the party’s future: whether it will double down on taking on big corporations and breaking up monopolies and concentrations of power, or walk away from the cause.
“If Vice President Harris wins, her decision whether to replace Lina Khan and other enforcement officials will be the first big test of whether she wants to preserve the broad coalition built by the Biden-Harris administration, or whether she’ll choose ongoing conflict with progressives instead,” said Dan Geldon, a consultant and former chief of staff to Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.
With Republicans favored to win the Senate, Harris may have few opportunities to pursue an ambitious legislative agenda, shifting the Democratic ideological fight to key personnel decisions.
“Her decision on Biden-era enforcement officials will also set the tone in her administration around whether officials will be penalized for standing up to powerful people and corporations,” Geldon told NBC News.
Likely flashpoints have already emerged in the closing weeks of the campaign, as Harris embraces figures like businessman Mark Cuban who have called for the ouster of progressive financial regulators like Khan and Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler. Billionaire Democratic mega-donors Barry Diller and Reid Hoffman have also pushed for Khan’s removal, with Hoffman claiming she is “waging war on American business.”
“After the election, there will be a battle for the soul of the Democratic Party when it comes to economics,” said Adam Green, the co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. “So it’ll be a big fork in the road for Kamala Harris.”
While outgoing President Joe Biden did not come out of the progressive movement, he made major entreaties to the left to consolidate their support after the factious 2020 Democratic primary. That resulted in a strong working relationship between activists and key Biden officials, like the president's first chief of staff, Ron Klain, and the installation of progressive favorites in key policy posts.
That includes Khan, who has led sweeping efforts to crack down on companies the FTC considers monopolies, such as Amazon and Facebook; gone after drug companies for allegedly inflating insulin prices; and headed the administration's ban on noncompete agreements.
Danielle Deiseroth, executive director of the progressive group Data for Progress, said her polling firm has tested FTC actions under Khan and found them to be “really popular,” even if “most Americans probably have not heard of Lina Khan by name.”
That aggressive stance, though, has also made Khan a target of some business-minded Democrats, including Hoffman, who see her as overly hostile to free enterprise.
Avoiding a confirmation fight
While the prospect of a Trump comeback has motivated progressives to rally around Harris in the near term, many still worry about the direction of the party, particularly as it welcomes more affluent and center-right voters who are turned off by the MAGA-infused GOP. Will Democrats continue to be a populist, worker-oriented party? Or will the electoral realignment cause them to start catering more to business?
If Harris loses, Democrats will have bigger problems, of course. But if she wins, activists and party stakeholders will be looking at what she does with Khan as one clue about how she sees the future of the party.
“It’d be a strategic blunder for Harris to pick an ugly fight over Lina Khan’s future when there’s already strong consensus among Democrats. Moderate senators like Bob Casey and Jackie Rosen are actively campaigning on the FTC’s work to lower prices,” said a Senate Democratic aide, who was granted anonymity to discuss a sensitive subject. “Progressives are ready to fight, but if Harris caves to her billionaire donors it will be her prosecutor brand and the entire Democratic Party that gets bruised in an unnecessary brawl.”
Cuban’s call for Khan’s ouster led Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., to issue a warning to the “billionaires ... trying to play footsie” with Harris: “Anyone goes near Lina Khan and there will be an out and out brawl. And that is a promise,” she said on X.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., also threw in for Khan, calling her “the best FTC chair in modern history.”
The Harris campaign declined to comment for this article.
Progressives have inertia on their side. Khan, whose term expired last month, can remain in the role until she is replaced. Removing her would not only infuriate the left but it could provoke a confirmation fight with Senate Republicans over her replacement.
Some in the progressive movement believe Harris should simply leave her there without going through confirmation again in the Senate if need be. Khan has broad support among Democrats and even some Republicans, including moderates outside the progressive movement.
“Khan has a lot of allies in Congress,” said Deiseroth. “Keeping her is the path of least resistance that will make the most people on the left happy.”
Meanwhile, the cryptocurrency industry and its allies also want to replace Gensler atop the SEC, since he has taken a skeptical view of the nascent industry.
The main pro-Crypto super PAC Fairshake has spent more than $204 million on the 2024 elections, cultivating a slew of new allies in Congress and in Harris’ orbit, including Cuban.
Harris herself has said relatively little about her thoughts on cryptocurrency, which makes progressives worry that in the absence of strong views of her own, and little organized opposition from crypto skeptics, they could have a hard time being heard.
Jeff Hauser, the founder of the progressive watchdog Revolving Door Project, said he’s hoping Ohio Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown, the current chair of the Senate Banking Committee, will win his tough re-election contest to serve as a countervailing voice inside the party.
“The more an issue touches on crypto, the less confident I am in her team,” he said.
Echoing campaign themes
Progressives are already feeling a bit more comfortable about Khan after Cuban on Monday walked back his criticism of Khan and said he’s not trying to influence personnel.
Geldon said keeping Khan would be consistent with the populist themes in Harris’ campaign platform and messaging, which have been a major part of her pitch to voters even as she campaigns with anti-Trump Republicans to court center-right voters.
“The Harris campaign’s advertisements have been overwhelmingly populist in nature, focusing on price gouging and other issues of corporate accountability,” Geldon said. “And that’s a strong indication they’re looking to continue the momentum built under the Biden-Harris administration.”
As with Khan and Gensler, in the case of a divided government, progressives are urging Harris to keep acting Cabinet secretaries and their deputies in place and using a vacancies law to make recess appointments, instead of trying to find replacements who could be confirmed by a hostile Republican-led Senate.
Current Cabinet officials may be asked to stay on to avoid a replacement fight but at least some will depart key roles, such as Attorney General Merrick Garland, who has few fans on the left for a number of reasons, including the perceived tentativeness with which he oversaw the federal prosecutions of former President Donald Trump.
Regardless of which party controls Congress, Harris, if elected, will be confronted with the challenge of working with Republicans almost immediately without alienating her left flank. The new Congress and president will need to raise the debt ceiling and fund the government again early next year.
Some on the left are already preparing to push a Harris administration to essentially disregard the nation’s debt limit, promoting the interpretation of legal scholars Michael Dorf and Neil Buchanan that it is unconstitutional.
Ezra Levin, a co-founder of the progressive advocacy network Indivisible, said his group’s members who are “very attuned” to Washington see Khan as one of the most effective Biden administration officials when it comes to taking on concentrated economic and political power.
“If it came to that in a new Harris administration we’d be pushing strongly to make sure that she stays in,” Levin said.
