In ‘107 Days’ book, Kamala Harris discusses NC visits, relationship with Cooper
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Harris highlights NC prominently in '107 Days,' citing campaign stops and events.
- Roy Cooper endorsed Harris immediately but declined to be her running mate.
- Harris recounts NC's 2024 swing state role, storm recovery visits and election loss.
Gov. Roy Cooper was among the first phone calls Vice President Kamala Harris made in 2024 when she learned President Joe Biden would end his reelection campaign.
On Tuesday, Harris released a 300-page book, “107 Days,” detailing her unsuccessful run for president — the shortest in U.S. history.
North Carolina, a battleground state in the 2024 election, got several mentions throughout the book, and Cooper came up within the first 18 pages.
Harris wrote that she wasn’t expecting Biden to drop out of the race, but at 1 p.m. on July 21, 2024, he called her with his decision. At 1:46 p.m. he went public and Harris and her team got to work remaking his campaign as her own.
In those first few hours, she worked the phone. In the book, she listed 15 people she called.
Among them, in addition to North Carolina’s Democratic governor:
- Former President Barack Obama
- Former President Bill Clinton
- Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
- Rep. Jim Clyburn, of South Carolina
- Gov. Josh Shapiro, of Pennsylvania
- Gov. Wes Moore, of Maryland
- Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg
- Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer
- Sen. Bernie Sanders, of Vermont
- Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, of Michigan
- Speaker Emeritus Nancy Pelosi
- Gov. J.B. Pritzker, of Illinois
- Gov. Gavin Newsom, of California
- Sen. Mark Kelly, of Arizona
She details notes she took from each. Not all gave an immediate endorsement. Newsom didn’t bother to call her back.
Cooper, she wrote, told her, “Before you say anything, I’m all in.”
Cooper and Harris have a long history together, both serving as attorneys general of their states at the same time, and he stumped for Biden and Harris throughout their campaigns.
As Harris launched her 2024 presidential campaign, Cooper was seen as a potential running mate. But in her book, she confirms Cooper withdrew immediately from consideration. She didn’t offer more details, but back then, Cooper said the timing was wrong.
Cooper is now running for U.S. Senate, looking to succeed two-term Sen. Thom Tillis, a Republican.
Hotel California
Because North Carolina is a swing state — it has voted for a Democratic governor and a Republican president in the last three presidential elections — it became a frequent stopping place for the presidential candidates and their surrogates.
Harris’ book details each day of her campaign chapter-by-chapter, and with her frequent stops in the state, it makes sense North Carolina would have a supporting role. McClatchy received an advance copy of the book that went on sale Tuesday.
But Harris’ first reference to the state wasn’t the most flattering.
In the chapter, 78 Days to the Election, Harris recalls the 2012 Democratic National Convention held in Charlotte.
“The city had rushed to get ready for the incoming hordes,” she writes. “It didn’t quite succeed. Parts of the hotel booked for our California delegation remained under construction, with the manufacturer’s stickers still on the elevators and no hot water in the showers. When I spoke at the delegates’ breakfast, I led with a line from the Eagles song: ‘Welcome to the Hotel California.’”
She writes that two nights later at the convention, she was supposed to give a speech on her work as attorney general taking on big banks — something she had worked together on with Cooper. She was advised to walk out like she owned the podium.
“I was trying for that confident strut— head up, shoulders back — when my stiletto sank right through the floor,” Harris wrote. “It had found the trapdoor in the stage.”
She also dealt with a broken teleprompter and a missing backup script.
Hurricane Helene
Forty-seven days of campaigning passes before she revisits North Carolina in her book. She witnessed the devastation of Helene in Western North Carolina.
Helene made landfall on Sept. 26, 2024, near Perry, Florida, as a Category 4 hurricane. Its remnants made its way up the East Coast, destroying communities. Western North Carolina was brutally affected with widespread flooding, leveled towns and at least 108 deaths. A year later, communities are still trying to dig out and recover.
“As I shook hands and looked into tired faces, I realized some of them had also suffered loss in the storm, but were still showing up, helping others,” Harris wrote. “I told them, ‘You are doing God’s work on the ground.’”
She would visit North Carolina again 23 days out from the election — her husband’s birthday.
This time she spoke at Koinonia Christian Center Church, in Greenville, where she talked about Eddie, of Holly Springs.
She didn’t give Eddie’s full name, but enough details to know she meant Eddie Hunnell, who was clearing trees in Western North Carolina for his son’s wedding when he heard a woman was trapped in her flooded house 150 yards away. He made a harrowing and dangerous rescue that left him with a minor injury, but both alive.
“He had told me he didn’t feel he had a choice,” Harris wrote. “I told the congregation, ‘Of course he had a choice … his choice was, in the words of Isaiah, to be a refuge for the needy in their distress.’”
She was quoting from Isaiah 25:4.
After leaving the church she met with Black farmers to discuss being the tie-breaking vote for the Inflation Reduction Act, which compensates Black farmers for discrimination they faced from the Department of Agriculture. She also spoke to them about climate change and how to work with youth to teach and learn from one another.
Then she was off to tape “Saturday Night Live” in New York City.
Facing Trump
Twenty days later, and three days out from the election, Harris returned to North Carolina, where she was trailing former President Donald Trump in the polls. This was the day that Air Force Two and Trump Force One shared the tarmac in Charlotte.
“That’s how it is in Battleground states the last few days of a campaign: you’re always tripping over your opponent,” she wrote.
The book also delves into watching North Carolina’s returns come in on election night. The state voted for Trump, helping him win back the White House.
This story was originally published September 23, 2025 at 5:00 AM.