Who is Kamala Harris? Why Joe Biden has chosen Kamala Harris to be his running mate! Senator Kamala Harris, made history when ...
Who is Kamala Harris? Why Joe Biden has chosen Kamala Harris to be his running mate!
Senator Kamala Harris, made history when it had been confirmed that she would be former vice president Joe Biden's campaigner in his 2020 presidential bid.
The announcement Tuesday makes her the primary Black woman and therefore the first Asian-American person on a serious party's presidential ticket.
Here's a glance back at her career, and her historic nomination:
Kamala Harris' youth:
Harris was born in Oakland, California, to Shyamala Gopalan, a breast-cancer scientist who immigrated from India, and Donald Harris, a professor of economics who immigrated from Jamaica.
Harris' time as a 'progressive prosecutor':
Harris may be a lawyer, earning her academic degree from the University of California-Hastings College of Law. She went on to function as a prosecutor nearby in Alameda County, where her career in criminal justice reform began.
After her time in Alameda, Harris became the primary female District attorney in San Francisco's history and was re-elected four years later.
In 2010, Harris became California's first female attorney general and was reelected by a good margin in 2014.
Though Harris often characterizes her tenure as attorney general as "progressive prosecutor," her tough-on-crime approach was a topic of scrutiny during her presidential run.
Harris' critics point to her anti-truancy program, which was launched in 2008, as a strike on her record. It brought down truancy rates and got more kids in classrooms, but did so by threatening jail time for his or her parents.
As District attorney, Harris strongly indicted truancy, stating that “a child going without an education is tantamount to a crime” in an SFGATE op-ed in 2009.
Harris also received heat for fighting to release fewer prisoners, even after the Supreme Court ordered California to scale back its prison population by 33,000 in 2011, consistent with the l. a. Times.
Harris also instituted a variety of progressive reforms as DA. They included “Back on target,” a program intended to scale back recidivism by allowing first-time drug offenders to graduate high school and obtain jobs rather than facing prison time.
Harris also required that under California’s controversial “three strikes” law that the San Francisco district attorney’s office could only charge for a 3rd strike if the felony was “serious or violent.”
As attorney general, Harris also introduced training on racial bias and procedural justice and made California’s Department of Justice the primary statewide agency to need body cameras, and launched a program tracking police killings for the general public to use.
Harris within the Senate
Harris has served because the senator from California since 2017, becoming the second Black woman and therefore the first South Asian-American senator in history.
In the Senate, she serves on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, the Committee on Intelligence, the Committee on the Budget, and therefore the Committee on the Judiciary.
Harris' popularity began to rise 2018 during Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation hearings for the Supreme Court, often going viral for her questioning of Kavanaugh, who was accused of sexual misconduct by California professor Christine Blasey Ford. Kavanaugh denied the allegations.
Kavanaugh testified before Congress about the alleged incident that Ford said happened once they were in high school. Harris gained national attention for grilling Kavanaugh after new details of a separate sexual misconduct allegation – that he had previously denied – came out.
Many of the 2020 Democratic candidates involved Kavanaugh to be impeached, including Harris.
"I sat through those hearings. Brett Kavanaugh lied to the U.S. Senate and most significantly to the American people," she wrote during a Tweet in 2018. "He was placed on the Court through a sham process and his place on the Court is an insult to the pursuit of truth and justice."
The announcement that Harris would be Biden's campaigner comes a year after Harris and Biden shared a number of the foremost contentious debates of the first season.
During the primary Democratic primary debate in June 2019, Harris had a viral exchange with Biden, where she called him out for opposing federally mandated busing to integrate schools while he was in Congress.
She also criticized controversial comments Biden made at a fundraiser earlier that month where he reminisced about his ability to make working relationships with segregationist lawmakers James O. Eastland and Herman Talmadge.
“It’s personal,” she said. “It was hurtful to listen to you mention the reputations of two us senators who built their reputations and career on the segregation of race during this country.”
In polling then exchange, the California senator experienced a spike among voters and was vaulted into the highest tier of candidates. However, her numbers began to dip after a few weeks. She dropped out of the Democratic presidential race in December.
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