Kamala Harris is making history again — this time in a way few could have imagined.
She’s already blazing a trail: as San Francisco’s first female district attorney. As California’s first female Attorney General. As the second black woman elected to the U.S. Senate. Of course, being the first female, first black and first Asian American vice president of the United States.
Now, at a critical moment in American history, Harris, a 59-year-old Democrat, is poised to become the Democratic presidential nominee after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race on Sunday.
Kamala Harris greets supporters on election night after winning the U.S. Senate race in 2016.
(Barbara Davidson/Los Angeles Times)
Biden, 81, dropped out of the race over concerns about his age and electability — a decision Harris called a “selfless and patriotic act” — and endorsed his deputy.
If Harris wins the nomination at next month’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago, she will become the first woman of color to lead a national race and, if she wins, the first female president.
“There are 107 days until Election Day,” Harris said in a statement on Sunday. “We will fight together. Together we will win.
ActBlue, a nonprofit fundraising platform, said grassroots supporters had raised $46.7 million as of 6 p.m. Pacific time on Sunday since Harris launched her campaign.
Harris publicly endorsed Biden and called for him to step down after a disastrous debate performance in June, fueling criticism that he is too old and frail to serve another four years.
She will no doubt face a fierce attack from Republicans who have rallied behind their nominee, Donald Trump, the twice-impeached and convicted former president, ahead of last week’s Republican National Convention. He narrowly escaped assassination in two days.
“I will do everything in my power to unite the Democratic Party, unite our country, and defeat Donald Trump and his extreme Plan 2025 agenda,” Harris wrote on social media platform X, citing the more than 900-page manifesto. leaders and followers of Trump.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, long known as a political frenemy of Harris, who has mirrored his own rise as a Democratic star in the Bay Area, wrote Sunday that the vice president is “tough.” . Fearless. tenacious.
He posted on direction.
Harris is a former prosecutor and a product of the chaos in Bay Area politics that has produced some of the nation’s most high-profile Democrats, including Newsom, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, former U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer.
From her successful 2003 run for San Francisco district attorney (defeating incumbent Democrats and her former boss) to her failed 2020 presidential bid (where she fiercely criticized Biden on the debate stage), she has performed throughout her political rise Showed perseverance.
Then – Sen. Kamala Harris attends an event in Ames, Iowa, in February 2019.
(Marcus Yam/Los Angeles Times)
But she has also been criticized for being too cautious and unwilling to take a stand on hot-button issues.
“Her 2020 campaign didn’t exactly inspire confidence,” said Jim Manley, a senior Senate leadership aide for decades. “What’s most disturbing is that when the campaign started to stall, it was racked by infighting and a lot of recrimination.”
Manley said that while Harris “has to play her cards absolutely perfect” and do a better job of communicating, “she’s strong enough to be able to do that, and that’s why the Trump family is nervous.
Harris was born in Oakland in 1964, the daughter of two immigrant graduate students. Her late mother, Shyamala Gopalan Harris, was a cancer researcher from India; her father, Donald Harris, was an economist from Jamaica.
Harris’ parents divorced when she was 7, and her mother became the primary caregiver and main influencer for her and her younger sister, Maya.
“There is no title or honor in the world that I cherish more than being the daughter of Shyamala Gopalan Harris,” she wrote in her 2019 memoir, The Truth We Hold: An American Journey. “
After college, she worked as a prosecutor in Alameda County and San Francisco, making her first foray into politics when she ran for district attorney and overcame overwhelming odds to defeat Democratic incumbent Terrence Hallinan.
During the campaign, she positioned herself to the right of progressive prosecutors as the law-and-order candidate. With one exception — she made it clear during the campaign that she opposed the death penalty.
California attorney at the time. Gen. Kamala Harris and Gov. Jerry Brown in 2012.
(Patrick T. Fallon/The Times)
Four months after Harris was elected, San Francisco police officer Isaac Espinoza was shot to death with an AK-47 by a known gang member while patrolling the city’s Bayview neighborhood. Shortly after Espinoza was killed and before she was buried, Harris said she would not seek the death penalty in the case.
Harris attended the funeral at St. Mary’s Cathedral. So did then-Sen. Feinstein, then a California attorney. Gen. Bill Lockyer and hundreds of police officers. Harris sat in the front row as Feinstein and Lockyer both called for the death penalty for their attackers.
“She took an incredible amount of flak,” said Dan Morain, a former Times reporter and author of the 2021 biography “Kamala’s Road.” “I think that incident made her more cautious about taking public stances on highly controversial issues.”
Years later, as attorney general, Harris fought in court to uphold California’s death penalty over her personal objections, putting her at odds with progressive criminal justice reform advocates and fueling perceptions of her indecisiveness .
But as attorney general, she also drew national attention for refusing to defend Proposition 8, a California ballot measure that would have banned same-sex marriage — a political risk that boosted her political profile and set the stage for mass culture Transformation paves the way.
In diverse California, Harris’ multiracial background became a political asset as she emerged onto the national Democratic stage, drawing comparisons to former President Obama. In 2014, Harris married Doug Emhoff, a white entertainment lawyer from Los Angeles, and became the stepmother of his two children, Cole and Ella. Mamala’s nickname, thus establishing his own multiracial, mixed-race nuclear family.
Harris ran for U.S. Senate in 2016.
(Barbara Davidson/Los Angeles Times)
In November 2016, Harris won election to the U.S. Senate with the support of Obama and Biden, becoming the second black woman to do so.
But her decisive victory was overshadowed by the election of Trump, who shocked members of both parties by defeating Democrat Hillary Clinton. Speaking to supporters on election night, she said: “When we are attacked, when our ideals and fundamental ideals are attacked, do we retreat or do we fight? I say let’s fight!
The Trump era has made her even more famous. In the Senate, she brought her skills as a prosecutor to hearings. Her grilling of conservative Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh was so powerful that video clips of her performance went viral on social media like an audition for her 2020 presidential campaign Bring the same.
Her presidential candidacy at the time quickly fell through as she failed to stand out in a crowded Democratic field and her campaign was hobbled by staff infighting and unclear messaging.
Still, she made an impression at the Democratic debate, attacking Biden for working with Senate segregationists decades ago to oppose school busing.
“There was a little girl in California who was part of the second class of integrated public schools. She took the bus to school every day,” she said. “That little girl is me.”
In 2022, Harris joined President Biden in welcoming former President Obama at a White House event.
(Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times)
When Biden and Harris were elected together the following year, Harris called to congratulate Biden while wearing a tracksuit, saying, “We did it, Joe.” It became a viral moment.
As vice president, Harris has come under intense scrutiny from the media and fellow Democrats — both because she is a barrier-breaker and because Biden’s advanced age has cast doubt on his reelection prospects.
The attention isn’t all flattering. Critics say the premature turnover of her staff is a sign of a weak management style. Supporters said she was the victim of a double standard and faced more scrutiny than her white male predecessors as a woman of color.
“She was underestimated. There was more than one level there,” said biographer Moran.
Sen. Laphonza Butler, D-Calif., has known Harris for 14 years and served as an adviser during Harris’ failed 2020 presidential campaign.
“This is a woman who is truly committed to bringing people together,” Butler said. “Even when criticism is directed at her, she strives to find themes or even concepts in the criticism directed at her to bring unity and consistency.”
Times staff writer Faith E. Pinho contributed to this report.
