Kamala Harris was announced as former vice president Joe Biden’s running mate for the 2020 United States presidential election on August 11, 2020, becoming the first African, Indian, American and the first Asian American to be chosen as the running mate of a major party’s presidential candidate.
“I have the great honor to announce that I’ve picked @KamalaHarris “- a fearless fighter for the little guy, and one of the country’s finest public servants “- as my running mate,” Biden tweeted. Senator Kamala Harris of California, whom Joe Biden chose on Tuesday as his running mate, will be the first Black woman and the first person of Indian descent to be nominated for national office by a major party.
Harris, at 55 a full generation younger than Biden, also imparts a youthful persona and diversity, with Jamaican and Indian ancestry that may help Biden, as a 77-year-old White man, energize a Democratic base that is rapidly becoming younger, more female and less White.
Born in the US to immigrants, cancer researcher Shyamala Gopalan from India and economics professor Donald Harris from Jamaica, Harris has leaped in a generation to running for a position that could put her a heartbeat away from the presidency. After her parents divorced when she was only seven, Harris was brought up by her mother, whom she has described as “tough and fierce and protective” yet “generous and loyal and funny,” and credits her for her success.
Harris’ record as a prosecutor – she was the San Francisco district attorney from 2004 to 2011, and the California attorney general from 2011 to 2017 – was a major theme of her presidential campaign. She has said she became a prosecutor because she believed she could best change the system from within, a message that became a key part of her pitch as a presidential candidate.
Elected to the Senate in 2016, Harris was the first Black woman in the chamber in more than a decade. During her relatively brief time as California’s junior senator, she has become known for her intensive interrogations of Trump administration officials and nominees, including Brett Kavanaugh during his Supreme Court confirmation hearing and during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing with Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
The former California attorney general is the first person of Indian descent in the running mate role, and personifies the diversity seen as key to building enthusiasm for the Democratic ticket, particularly in a year marked by a historic reckoning on race. She is the third female vice presidential nominee for a major party, after the groundbreaking but unsuccessful runs of Democrat Geraldine Ferraro in 1984 and Republican Sarah Palin in 2008. Hillary Clinton was the first female presidential nominee, losing to Trump in 2016.
Kamala Devi Harris is an American politician and lawyer who has served as the junior United States senator from California since 2017.
Born in Oakland, California, Harris is a graduate of Howard University and the University of California, Hastings College of the Law. She began her career in the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office, before being recruited to the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office and later the City Attorney of San Francisco’s office. In 2003, she was elected district attorney of San Francisco. She was then elected attorney general of California in 2010; she was re-elected in 2014.
She defeated Loretta Sanchez in the 2016 Senate election to succeed Barbara Boxer, becoming California’s third female senator as well as the second African American woman and the first South Asian American to serve in the United States Senate. As a senator, she has supported healthcare reform, federal rescheduling of cannabis, a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, the DREAM Act, a ban on assault weapons, and progressive tax reform. She gained a national profile for her pointed questioning of Trump administration officials during Senate hearings.