Outgoing Sen. Joe Manchin said he is not planning to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign for president after she called on the Senate to end the filibuster to pass legislation that would protect abortion rights.
“I’m not endorsing. I think that’s basically something that can destroy our country, and my country is more important to me than any one person or any one person’s ideology,” Manchin said. He added that ending the filibuster is “the most horrible thing.”
The West Virginia senator, who overlapped with Harris in the Senate, previously said he was considering endorsing Harris. He was formerly a Democrat and left the party earlier this year. But after she said in an interview with Wisconsin Public Radio that the Senate “should eliminate the filibuster for Roe,” he made the decision not to back her.
Manchin, a centrist, has long prioritized protecting the filibuster, which has been a major source of tension with Democrats in passing legislation.
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“Shame on her,” Manchin told reporters. “She knows that the filibuster is the holy grail of democracy. It’s the only thing that keeps us talking and working together. You get rid of that and this would be the House on steroids.”
Harris’ stance is not new. President Joe Biden urged Senate Democrats to end the filibuster to codify Roe shortly after the Supreme Court overturned the decision in 2022, and Harris did the same. Her comments on Tuesday were the first time she’d reiterated her position as the Democratic nominee at the top of the ticket.
Manchin said he had hoped Harris would change her mind.
“She said she supported banning fracking too, and she changed that. I was hoping she would change this,” Manchin said.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who has previously suggested changing filibuster rules if Democrats keep their majority in the Senate, told reporters on Tuesday that Senate Democrats would discuss a filibuster carveout for abortion rights “in the next session of Congress.”
Such a carveout has gained increasing traction in the Democratic Party.
Some senators who have previously expressed reservations about filibuster reform told NOTUS on Tuesday they would support changing the rules as long as it was a change limited to abortion rights.
That includes Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona, a Democrat who said he would “support” eliminating the filibuster on this issue because abortion is “a fundamental right that’s been taken away.”
New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, also a Democrat, told NOTUS senators need to have a conversation about filibuster reform in general, but like Harris, she said she would support ending the filibuster to codify abortion rights into federal law.
Other Democrats wouldn’t commit.
Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island said he would “have to look very closely” at what a filibuster reform proposal would look like. Similarly, Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock said that the situation around abortion in the U.S. is “urgent,” but he didn’t take a clear stance on whether he’d definitely back ending the filibuster to protect abortion access when asked.
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Oriana González is a reporter at NOTUS.
Editor’s Note: This post has been updated to include additional reporting.
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