Vice President Kamala Harris formally secured the Democratic presidential nomination on Friday, culminating a long career and dramatic rise to become the nation’s first Black woman selected as a major party’s nominee and capping one of the most tumultuous months in recent American political history.

The virtual vote by nearly 4,000 Democratic delegates began at 9 a.m. on Thursday, and by a little after 1 p.m. on Friday, Harris had secured enough votes to win the nomination. Ultimately there was little suspense — Harris was the only candidate who qualified for the roll call vote, and most of the delegates had already endorsed her — but the formal ascent of the first woman of color to lead a presidential ticket marked a milestone for a nation long riven by racial and gender issues.

“I will officially accept your nomination next week, once the virtual voting period is closed,” Harris said on a live stream as delegates continued to cast ballots. “But already I’m happy to know we have enough delegates to secure the nomination.” The process officially continues through Monday, despite the foregone conclusion.

Attention now shifts to whom Harris will pick as a running mate, a process that is expected to wrap up in the coming days before she and her vice presidential pick launch a nationwide campaign tour next week across seven battleground states. She has narrowed her search for a running mate to six finalists and is planning to conduct interviews with them this weekend, according to two people familiar with the process who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential deliberations.

Those finalists are Govs. Andy Beshear of Kentucky, J.B. Pritzker of Illinois, Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and Tim Walz of Minnesota, as well as Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona, the people said. Representatives for Beshear, Buttigieg and Shapiro confirmed that those officials had canceled previously scheduled plans for this weekend.

Harris, who was born in California to an Indian mother and Jamaican father, becomes just the second person of color in America’s nearly 250-year history to head a major presidential ticket, after Barack Obama did in 2008. If she prevails over Republican Donald Trump, she would be the nation’s first female and first Asian American president.

The Democratic Party has also never before had a presidential nominee from the West, a 2019 analysis from FiveThirtyEight found.

Parties typically nominate their ticket during their in-person convention, but Democrats were worried about ballot qualification deadlines in several states and decided instead to hold a virtual nomination before the Democratic National Convention later this month. Convention planners are preparing a symbolic roll call for prime-time television coverage at the gathering in Chicago, with representatives of each state offering their votes for Harris in a customized fashion.

Harris’s nomination finalizes an unprecedented move by a major political party to replace its presumptive nominee, one who was also the sitting president and had swept its primary contests, so late in the process. Some predicted that attempting such a switch would create chaos and resentment within the party, but Democrats’ relief and enthusiasm at Harris’ campaign events seem to defy those predictions.

After President Joe Biden announced July 21 he was ending his bid for reelection, the party rapidly coalesced around Harris as the likely nominee. State parties endorsed her, along with top elected officials around the country.

At the same time, Democratic leaders scrambled to create a nomination process that did not rely on state primary contests, all of which Biden had already won. The new process allowed anyone to run if they obtained 300 signatures from delegates supporting their bid, including no more than 50 from any single state. Harris was the only candidate to meet those qualifications.

Her ability to rapidly win the backing of her party was a significant shift from her earlier standing, when many Democrats questioned her strength as a candidate and as a vice president. Her 2020 presidential bid got off to a strong start — with big crowds and generational excitement — but faltered amid organizational dysfunction and a candidate who, some Democrats felt, seemed to take positions based more on polls than convictions. Harris ultimately dropped out of the Democratic primary before a single vote was cast.

But Biden’s stumbling performance against Trump at their June 27 debate reshaped the landscape, setting off an agonizing weeks-long stretch for Democrats as the president battled many in his party who were urging him to exit the race amid concerns about his age. By the time Biden stepped aside, the relief among Democrats was palpable, and there were few options other than Harris.

The rollout of her campaign, as she largely inherited an operation built by Biden, has resulted in renewed hope among Democrats who had grown despondent about their chances of defeating Trump.

Biden said Friday he had spoken with Harris about her deliberations over picking a running mate, but when asked what qualities she should prioritize, he responded, “I’ll let her work that out.” As the political frenzy built around Harris, Biden left the White House to spend the weekend at his home in Wilmington, Delaware.

Harris also hired a battery of new senior campaign advisers this week, moving swiftly to replace Biden loyalists with other Democratic campaign veterans — including leaders of Obama’s presidential bids, according to people briefed on the campaign shifts who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal dynamics.

David Plouffe, a top strategist on both of Obama’s presidential campaigns, will join the Harris operation as senior adviser for strategy and the states, focused on winning the electoral college. Stephanie Cutter, who was deputy campaign manager for Obama’s reelection campaign and has quietly been working in recent months with Harris, will be the new senior adviser for strategy messaging.

Mitch Stewart, a grass-roots organizing strategist involved in both Obama wins, will become the senior adviser for battleground states. David Binder, who led Obama’s public opinion research operation and previously worked for Harris, will expand his role on the Harris campaign to lead the opinion research operation.

All of the new hires will report to campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon, another veteran of Obama’s two campaigns. She managed Biden’s 2020 campaign and built his 2024 operation from the White House before moving to Wilmington this year.

Trump held no public campaign events on Friday. The former president and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), plan to hold a rally Saturday at the Georgia State Convocation Center in Atlanta, the same venue where Harris held a boisterous campaign rally this week.

As both sides adjust to the political reality of Harris’s candidacy, a looming question is whether Trump will debate his new opponent, especially given the decisive impact of his debate against Biden. On Friday, Trump told Fox Business that he did not see the point of such a debate, since “everybody knows me.”

That prompted Harris’s campaign to accuse Trump of being “too scared to debate.”

“Donald Trump needs to man up. He’s got no problem spreading lies and hateful garbage at his rallies or in interviews with right-wing commentators,” Harris campaign co-chair Cedric L. Richmond said in a statement. “But he’s apparently too scared to do it standing across the stage from the Vice President of the United States.”

The Harris campaign announced Friday it had raised $310 million in July, the biggest number so far in the 2024 campaign cycle and more than double Trump’s take last month. More than $200 million of the haul came the week after Biden announced he was ending his reelection campaign.

Officials of the Harris campaign also reported that, overall, they have raised $1 billion so far this cycle, the fastest a presidential campaign has hit that threshold.

The Harris campaign says it has $377 million in cash on hand, while Trump’s operation says it has $327 million. The figures provided by the campaigns cannot be confirmed until later this month, when the official financial disclosure forms are filed.

Harris’ supporters cited the fundraising numbers to argue that she is generating excitement among groups that Biden struggled to energize. Two-thirds of the $310 million that Harris raised in July came from first-time donors and 60% came from women. And the campaign reported having 10 times the number of donors from Generation Z in July as in the previous month.

Amy B. Wang and Maegan Vazquez contributed to this report.

related stories

• Harris narrows VP search to six finalists, plans to interview them this weekend
• With $310 million, Harris raised more than twice as much as Trump in July