Women of Influence: Kamala Harris
The United States has not yet had a woman as its head of state, unlike other nations like Germany, Great Britain, Canada, India, Israel, Argentina, Iceland, Philippines, Poland, Ireland, New Zealand, Finland, Ukraine, Australia, Brazil, Denmark, Kosovo, Thailand, Norway, Sweden, Romania, Greece, Hungary and many others. It was only recently that a woman was chosen the second-most powerful office in the executive branch when in 2020 Kamala Harris, the former Senator from California, was elected as Vice-President of the United States.
Kamala Devi Harris was born in Oakland, California, on October 20, 1964. Her mother is Shyamala Gopalan, a Tamil Indian biologist, whose work on the progesterone receptor gene stimulated advances in breast cancer research. Her mother arrived in the United States from India in 1958 as a 19-year-old graduate student in nutrition and endocrinology at the University of California, Berkeley and received her PhD in 1964. Harris's father, Donald J. Harris, a Stanford University professor emeritus of economics, arrived in the United States from British Jamaica in 1961 for graduate study at UC Berkeley, receiving a PhD in economics in 1966. Donald Harris met his future wife Shyamala Gopalan through their common interest in the civil rights movement.
Harris and her younger sister Maya lived in Berkeley, California. When Harris began kindergarten, she was bused as part of Berkeley's comprehensive desegregation program to Thousand Oaks Elementary School, a public school in a more prosperous neighborhood in northern Berkeley which previously had been 95 percent white. As a child she attended an African American church in Oakland and sang in the children's choir. Her mother introduced her to Hinduism and she attended a nearby Hindu temple.
Kamala Harris's parents divorced when she was seven. When she was twelve, Harris and her sister moved with their mother to Montreal, Quebec, where Sher mother had accepted a research and teaching position at the McGill University-affiliated Jewish General Hospital. Harris attended a French-speaking primary school, Notre-Dame-des-Neiges, then F.A.C.E. School, and finally Westmount High School in Westmount, Quebec, graduating in 1981. After high school, in 1982, Harris attended Howard University, a historically black university in Washington, D.C. While at Howard, she interned as a mailroom clerk for California senator Alan Cranston. Harris graduated from Howard in 1986 with a degree in political science and economics.
Harris then returned to California to attend law school at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law through its Legal Education Opportunity Program. She graduated with a Juris Doctor in 1989 and was admitted to the California Bar in June 1990. In 1990, Harris was hired as a deputy district attorney in Alameda County, California. In 1994, Speaker of the California Assembly Willie Brown, who was then dating Harris, appointed her to the state Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board and later to the California Medical Assistance Commission.
In February 1998, San Francisco district attorney Terence Hallinan hired Harris as an assistant district attorney. She became the chief of the Career Criminal Division, supervising five other attorneys, where she prosecuted homicide, burglary, robbery, and sexual assault cases, specializing in "three-strikes" cases. In 2000, Harris clashed with Hallinan's assistant, Darrell Salomon over Proposition 21, which granted prosecutors the option of trying juvenile defendants in Superior Court rather than juvenile courts. Harris campaigned against the measure, which passed. Salomon reassigned Harris and she filed a complaint against Salomon and resigned. In August 2000, Harris took a job at San Francisco City Hall, where she ran the Family and Children's Services Division representing child abuse and neglect cases.
In 2002, Harris prepared to run for District Attorney of San Francisco against Hallinan. Harris and Hallinan advanced to the general election runoff. She had the support of former mayor Willie Brown, Senator Dianne Feinstein, and comedians Eddie Griffin and Chris Rock. Harris won with 56 percent of the vote, becoming the first person of color elected as district attorney of San Francisco. She ran unopposed for a second term in November 2007.
She was elected Attorney General of California in 2010 and re-elected in 2014. In January of 2015 California Senator Barbara Boxer announced that she would not run for reelection in 2016. Harris announced her candidacy for the Senate seat the following week. The 2016 California Senate election used California's new top-two primary format where the top two candidates in the primary would advance to the general election regardless of party. In February 2016, Harris won 78% of the California Democratic Party vote at the party convention. Governor Jerry Brown endorsed her candidacy. Harris faced congresswoman and fellow Democrat Loretta Sanchez in the general election, the first time a Republican did not appear in a general election for the Senate since California began directly electing senators in 1914. On July 19, President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden endorsed Harris. In the November 2016 election, Harris defeated Sanchez, capturing over 60% of the vote, and winning all but four counties.
Harris served as the junior United States senator from California from 2017 to 2021. She became the second African American woman and the first South Asian American to serve in the United States Senate. As a senator, she advocated for healthcare reform, federal de-scheduling of cannabis, a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, the DREAM Act, a ban on assault weapons, and progressive tax reform. She raised her national profile for her pointed questioning of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, who was accused of sexual assault.
On January 21, 2019, Harris officially announced her candidacy for president of the United States. More than 20,000 people attended her formal campaign launch event in Oakland, California. During the first Democratic presidential debate in June 2019, Harris was highly critical of former vice president Joe Biden of his stance on the issue of mandatory school bussing. In the second debate in August, Harris was confronted by Biden over her record as attorney general. Biden's accusations included Harris were blocking the DNA testing of a death row inmate and her defense of California's death penalty in 2014. Harris fell in the polls following that debate. Over the next few months her poll numbers fell to the low single digits. On December 3, 2019, Harris withdrew from seeking the 2020 Democratic nomination, giving the reason as a shortage of funds. In March 2020, Harris endorsed Joe Biden for president.
In late February, Biden won a landslide victory in the 2020 South Carolina Democratic primary with the endorsement of House whip Jim Clyburn, with more victories on Super Tuesday. In early March, Clyburn suggested Biden choose a black woman as a running mate. Clyburn was quoted as saying that "African American women needed to be rewarded for their loyalty". In March, Biden committed to choosing a woman for his running mate.
In late May, in relation to the murder of George Floyd and ensuing protests and demonstrations, Biden faced renewed calls to select a black woman to be his running mate, and on June 12, The New York Times reported that Harris was the frontrunner to be Biden's running mate. On August 11, 2020, Biden announced that he had chosen Harris. She was the first African American, the first Indian American, and the third woman after Geraldine Ferraro and Sarah Palin to be picked as the vice-presidential nominee for a major party ticket. Harris became the vice president–elect following the Biden-Harris ticket's victory in the 2020 United States presidential election.
Harris assumed office as vice president of the United States on January 20, 2021. She is also the second person of color to hold the post, preceded by Charles Curtis, a Native American and member of the Kaw Nation, who served under Herbert Hoover from 1929 to 1933. Her first act as vice president was swearing in her replacement Alex Padilla and Georgia senators Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, who were elected in the 2021 Georgia runoff elections.
Since January 20, 2021, the current 117th Congress's Senate has been divided 50–50 between Republicans and Democrats, which has required Harris had to be called upon to cast tiebreaking votes. Harris cast her first of two tie-breaking votes on February 5, 2021. In February and March, Harris's tie-breaking votes in her role as President of the Senate were crucial in passing the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 stimulus package proposed by President Biden. As of November 2021, Harris has cast 13 tie-breaking votes during her first year in office, the most tie-breaking votes in a single year in U.S. history, surpassing John Adams who cast 12 votes in 1790.
On March 24, 2021, Biden tasked Harris with addressing the problem of unaccompanied minors and adult asylum seekers and with leading the negotiations with Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. In June 2021, Harris visited Guatemala and Mexico in an attempt to address the root causes of an increase in migration from Central America to the United States. During her visit, in a joint press conference with Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei, Harris issued an appeal to potential migrants, stating "I want to be clear to folks in the region who are thinking about making that dangerous trek to the United States-Mexico border: Do not come. Do not come."
On November 19, 2021, Harris served as acting president from 10:10 to 11:35 am EST, while President Biden underwent a colonoscopy.[327] She became the first woman, and the third person overall, to assume the powers and duties of the U.S. presidency under Section 3 of the Twenty-fifth Amendment.
Her approval ratings as vice president have not been good and have been as low as 28%, meaning that even many in her own party do not approve of her job performance. Harris's term in office has seen high staff turnovers that included her chief of staff, deputy chief of staff, press secretary, deputy press secretary, communications director, and chief speechwriter. Her critics suggest such she is a difficult person to work for because of her abrasive management style. This has severely hampered the likelihood of a presidential run for her in 2024 if President Biden chooses not to run for re-election, and even speculation that she could be replaced on the ticket by Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. It will be interesting to see if, in the next two years she can restore and enhance her sphere of influence.
Kamala Devi Harris was born in Oakland, California, on October 20, 1964. Her mother is Shyamala Gopalan, a Tamil Indian biologist, whose work on the progesterone receptor gene stimulated advances in breast cancer research. Her mother arrived in the United States from India in 1958 as a 19-year-old graduate student in nutrition and endocrinology at the University of California, Berkeley and received her PhD in 1964. Harris's father, Donald J. Harris, a Stanford University professor emeritus of economics, arrived in the United States from British Jamaica in 1961 for graduate study at UC Berkeley, receiving a PhD in economics in 1966. Donald Harris met his future wife Shyamala Gopalan through their common interest in the civil rights movement.
Harris and her younger sister Maya lived in Berkeley, California. When Harris began kindergarten, she was bused as part of Berkeley's comprehensive desegregation program to Thousand Oaks Elementary School, a public school in a more prosperous neighborhood in northern Berkeley which previously had been 95 percent white. As a child she attended an African American church in Oakland and sang in the children's choir. Her mother introduced her to Hinduism and she attended a nearby Hindu temple.
Kamala Harris's parents divorced when she was seven. When she was twelve, Harris and her sister moved with their mother to Montreal, Quebec, where Sher mother had accepted a research and teaching position at the McGill University-affiliated Jewish General Hospital. Harris attended a French-speaking primary school, Notre-Dame-des-Neiges, then F.A.C.E. School, and finally Westmount High School in Westmount, Quebec, graduating in 1981. After high school, in 1982, Harris attended Howard University, a historically black university in Washington, D.C. While at Howard, she interned as a mailroom clerk for California senator Alan Cranston. Harris graduated from Howard in 1986 with a degree in political science and economics.
Harris then returned to California to attend law school at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law through its Legal Education Opportunity Program. She graduated with a Juris Doctor in 1989 and was admitted to the California Bar in June 1990. In 1990, Harris was hired as a deputy district attorney in Alameda County, California. In 1994, Speaker of the California Assembly Willie Brown, who was then dating Harris, appointed her to the state Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board and later to the California Medical Assistance Commission.
In February 1998, San Francisco district attorney Terence Hallinan hired Harris as an assistant district attorney. She became the chief of the Career Criminal Division, supervising five other attorneys, where she prosecuted homicide, burglary, robbery, and sexual assault cases, specializing in "three-strikes" cases. In 2000, Harris clashed with Hallinan's assistant, Darrell Salomon over Proposition 21, which granted prosecutors the option of trying juvenile defendants in Superior Court rather than juvenile courts. Harris campaigned against the measure, which passed. Salomon reassigned Harris and she filed a complaint against Salomon and resigned. In August 2000, Harris took a job at San Francisco City Hall, where she ran the Family and Children's Services Division representing child abuse and neglect cases.
In 2002, Harris prepared to run for District Attorney of San Francisco against Hallinan. Harris and Hallinan advanced to the general election runoff. She had the support of former mayor Willie Brown, Senator Dianne Feinstein, and comedians Eddie Griffin and Chris Rock. Harris won with 56 percent of the vote, becoming the first person of color elected as district attorney of San Francisco. She ran unopposed for a second term in November 2007.
She was elected Attorney General of California in 2010 and re-elected in 2014. In January of 2015 California Senator Barbara Boxer announced that she would not run for reelection in 2016. Harris announced her candidacy for the Senate seat the following week. The 2016 California Senate election used California's new top-two primary format where the top two candidates in the primary would advance to the general election regardless of party. In February 2016, Harris won 78% of the California Democratic Party vote at the party convention. Governor Jerry Brown endorsed her candidacy. Harris faced congresswoman and fellow Democrat Loretta Sanchez in the general election, the first time a Republican did not appear in a general election for the Senate since California began directly electing senators in 1914. On July 19, President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden endorsed Harris. In the November 2016 election, Harris defeated Sanchez, capturing over 60% of the vote, and winning all but four counties.
Harris served as the junior United States senator from California from 2017 to 2021. She became the second African American woman and the first South Asian American to serve in the United States Senate. As a senator, she advocated for healthcare reform, federal de-scheduling of cannabis, a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, the DREAM Act, a ban on assault weapons, and progressive tax reform. She raised her national profile for her pointed questioning of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, who was accused of sexual assault.
On January 21, 2019, Harris officially announced her candidacy for president of the United States. More than 20,000 people attended her formal campaign launch event in Oakland, California. During the first Democratic presidential debate in June 2019, Harris was highly critical of former vice president Joe Biden of his stance on the issue of mandatory school bussing. In the second debate in August, Harris was confronted by Biden over her record as attorney general. Biden's accusations included Harris were blocking the DNA testing of a death row inmate and her defense of California's death penalty in 2014. Harris fell in the polls following that debate. Over the next few months her poll numbers fell to the low single digits. On December 3, 2019, Harris withdrew from seeking the 2020 Democratic nomination, giving the reason as a shortage of funds. In March 2020, Harris endorsed Joe Biden for president.
In late February, Biden won a landslide victory in the 2020 South Carolina Democratic primary with the endorsement of House whip Jim Clyburn, with more victories on Super Tuesday. In early March, Clyburn suggested Biden choose a black woman as a running mate. Clyburn was quoted as saying that "African American women needed to be rewarded for their loyalty". In March, Biden committed to choosing a woman for his running mate.
In late May, in relation to the murder of George Floyd and ensuing protests and demonstrations, Biden faced renewed calls to select a black woman to be his running mate, and on June 12, The New York Times reported that Harris was the frontrunner to be Biden's running mate. On August 11, 2020, Biden announced that he had chosen Harris. She was the first African American, the first Indian American, and the third woman after Geraldine Ferraro and Sarah Palin to be picked as the vice-presidential nominee for a major party ticket. Harris became the vice president–elect following the Biden-Harris ticket's victory in the 2020 United States presidential election.
Harris assumed office as vice president of the United States on January 20, 2021. She is also the second person of color to hold the post, preceded by Charles Curtis, a Native American and member of the Kaw Nation, who served under Herbert Hoover from 1929 to 1933. Her first act as vice president was swearing in her replacement Alex Padilla and Georgia senators Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, who were elected in the 2021 Georgia runoff elections.
Since January 20, 2021, the current 117th Congress's Senate has been divided 50–50 between Republicans and Democrats, which has required Harris had to be called upon to cast tiebreaking votes. Harris cast her first of two tie-breaking votes on February 5, 2021. In February and March, Harris's tie-breaking votes in her role as President of the Senate were crucial in passing the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 stimulus package proposed by President Biden. As of November 2021, Harris has cast 13 tie-breaking votes during her first year in office, the most tie-breaking votes in a single year in U.S. history, surpassing John Adams who cast 12 votes in 1790.
On March 24, 2021, Biden tasked Harris with addressing the problem of unaccompanied minors and adult asylum seekers and with leading the negotiations with Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. In June 2021, Harris visited Guatemala and Mexico in an attempt to address the root causes of an increase in migration from Central America to the United States. During her visit, in a joint press conference with Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei, Harris issued an appeal to potential migrants, stating "I want to be clear to folks in the region who are thinking about making that dangerous trek to the United States-Mexico border: Do not come. Do not come."
On November 19, 2021, Harris served as acting president from 10:10 to 11:35 am EST, while President Biden underwent a colonoscopy.[327] She became the first woman, and the third person overall, to assume the powers and duties of the U.S. presidency under Section 3 of the Twenty-fifth Amendment.
Her approval ratings as vice president have not been good and have been as low as 28%, meaning that even many in her own party do not approve of her job performance. Harris's term in office has seen high staff turnovers that included her chief of staff, deputy chief of staff, press secretary, deputy press secretary, communications director, and chief speechwriter. Her critics suggest such she is a difficult person to work for because of her abrasive management style. This has severely hampered the likelihood of a presidential run for her in 2024 if President Biden chooses not to run for re-election, and even speculation that she could be replaced on the ticket by Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. It will be interesting to see if, in the next two years she can restore and enhance her sphere of influence.