US Vice President Kamala Harris, a daughter of immigrants who rose through the California political and law enforcement ranks to become the first female vice president in US history, on Monday formally secured the Democratic presidential nomination — becoming the first woman of color to lead a major party ticket.
More than four years after her first attempt at the presidency collapsed, Harris’ coronation as her party’s standard-bearer caps a tumultuous and frenetic period for Democrats prompted by US President Joe Biden’s disastrous June debate performance that shattered his own supporters’ confidence in his re-election prospects.race.
Harris’ nomination became official after a five-day round of online balloting by Democratic National Convention delegates ended Monday night, with the party saying in a statement released just before midnight that 99 percent of delegates casting ballots had done so for Harris. The party said it would next formally certify the vote before holding a celebratory roll call at the party’s convention later this month in Chicago.
Photo: AP / New York Times
Harris has already telegraphed that she does not plan to veer much from the themes and policies that framed Biden’s candidacy, such as democracy, gun violence prevention and abortion rights. But her delivery can be far fierier, particularly when she invokes her prosecutorial background to lambast Trump and his 34 felony convictions for falsifying business records in connection with a hush money scheme.
“Given that unique voice of a new generation, of a prosecutor and a woman when fundamental rights, especially reproductive rights, are on the line, it’s almost as if the stars have aligned for her at this moment in history,” said US Senator Alex Padilla of California, who was tapped to succeed Harris in the Senate when she became vice president.
Kamala Devi Harris was born Oct. 20, 1964, in Oakland, California, to Shyamala Gopalan, a breast cancer scientist who emigrated to the US from India when she was 19 years old, and Stanford University emeritus professor Donald Harris, a naturalized US citizen originally from Jamaica.
She spent years as a prosecutor in the Bay Area before her elevation as the state’s attorney general in 2010 and then election as US senator in 2016.
Harris’ first months as vice president were far from smooth. Biden asked her to lead the administration’s diplomatic efforts with Central America on the root causes of migration to the US, which triggered attacks from Republicans on border security and remains a political vulnerability.
For her first two years, Harris also was often tethered to Washington so she could break tie votes in the evenly divided Senate, which gave Democrats landmark wins on climate and healthcare, but also constrained opportunities for her to travel around the country and meet voters.
Her visibility became far more prominent after the 2022 Supreme Court ruling that dismantled Roe v Wade, as she became the chief spokesperson for the administration on abortion rights and was a more natural messenger than Biden, a lifelong Catholic who had in the past favored restrictions on the procedure.
After Biden ended his candidacy on July 21, he quickly endorsed Harris. During the first two weeks of her 2024 presidential bid, enthusiasm among the Democratic base surged, with donations pouring in, scores of volunteers showing up at field offices and supporters swelling so much in numbers that event organizers have had to swap venues.
“The country is able to see the Kamala Harris that we all know,” said Bakari Sellers, who was a national cochair of her 2020 US presidential campaign.
Yet Democrats are anticipating that Harris’ political honeymoon will wear off, and she is inevitably going to come under tougher scrutiny for Biden administration positions, the state of the economy and volatile situations abroad, particularly in the Middle East. Harris has also yet to answer extended questions from journalists or sit down for a formal interview since she began her run.
The Trump campaign has been eager to define Harris as she continues to introduce herself to voters nationwide, releasing an ad blaming her for the high number of illegal crossings at the southern border during the Biden administration.
The Republican nominee’s supporters have also derisively branded Harris as a diversity hire, while Trump himself has engaged in ugly racial attacks of his own, wrongly asserting that Harris had in the past only promoted her Indian heritage and only recently played up her Black identity.
“I didn’t know she was black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn black and now she wants to be known as black,” Trump said while addressing the annual convention of the National Association of Black Journalists. “So, I don’t know, is she Indian or is she black?”
In her response, Harris called it “the same old show — the divisiveness and the disrespect” and said voters “deserve better.”
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