WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris, the daughter of immigrants who rose through the ranks in California politics and law enforcement to become the first female vice president in U.S. history, officially secured the Democratic presidential nomination Monday, making her the first woman of color to lead a major party.
More than four years after the failure of her first attempt to become president, Harris’s coronation as her party’s front-runner caps a turbulent and hectic period for Democrats, sparked by President Joe Biden’s disastrous performance in the US debate in June, which shook his own supporters’ confidence in his re-election chances and sparked an extraordinary intra-party dispute over whether he should stay in the race.
Immediately after Biden abruptly ended his candidacy, Harris and her team rushed to secure the support of the 1,976 party delegates needed to force the nomination in a formal roll call vote. She reached that mark at top speed. A nationwide Associated Press poll of delegates found she had the necessary pledges under control just 32 hours after Biden’s announcement.
Harris’ nomination became official after a five-day round of online voting by delegates to the Democratic National Convention concluded Monday night. In a statement released shortly before midnight, the party announced that 99% of delegates who cast ballots had voted for Harris. The party had long considered the early virtual roll call to ensure Biden is on the ballot in every state. It said it would next officially certify the vote before holding a ceremonial roll call at the party’s convention in Chicago later this month.
An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted after Biden’s withdrawal found that 46% of Americans have a favorable opinion of Harris, while a nearly equal share have an unfavorable opinion of her. However, more Democrats say they are elated with her candidacy than with Biden’s, giving up-to-date momentum to a party that had long resigned itself to the idea that the 81-year-old Biden would be its nominee against former President Donald Trump, a Republican they see as an existential threat.
Harris has already indicated that she does not plan to deviate much from the issues and policies that have defined Biden’s candidacy, such as democracy, gun violence prevention and abortion rights. But her speech can be much more heated, especially if she draws on her past as a prosecutor to criticize Trump and his 34 convictions for falsifying business records in connection with a hush money scheme.
“Given this unique voice of a new generation, of a prosecutor and of a woman when it comes to fundamental rights, particularly reproductive rights, it’s almost as if the stars are aligned for her at this historic moment,” said Democratic Senator Alex Padilla of California, who was slated to succeed Harris in the Senate when she became vice president.
A stir in Washington before the failure of the 2020 primaries
Kamala Devi Harris was born on October 20, 1964, in Oakland, California, to Shyamala Gopalan, a breast cancer researcher who emigrated to the United States from India at age 19, and Stanford University professor emeritus Donald Harris, a naturalized U.S. citizen originally from Jamaica. Her parents’ commitment to civil rights gave her, as she described it, a “bird’s eye view” of the movement.
She served for years as a prosecutor in the Bay Area before being appointed the state’s attorney general in 2010 and elected as a U.S. Senator in 2016.
Harris came to Washington as a senator at the start of the volatile Trump era and quickly established herself as a reliable liberal opponent of the up-to-date president’s personnel and policies. She fueled speculation about a presidential run of her own. Her place on the coveted Judiciary Committee brought her national attention to question prominent Trump nominees such as current Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
“I can’t be rushed that easily,” then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions said during a hearing in 2017 when Harris repeatedly pressed him about possible conversations with Russian nationals. “It makes me nervous.”
Harris launched her 2020 presidential campaign promisingly, drawing parallels to former President Barack Obama and attracting more than 20,000 people to a kickoff rally in her hometown. But Harris withdrew from the primary before the first nominating contest in Iowa, plagued by blatant opposition from staff and an inability to raise enough campaign funds.
Harris has struggled to project a unified image to Democratic voters and has wavered on key issues such as health care. She hinted that she supported eliminating private health insurance in favor of a fully public system – “Medicare for All” – before putting forward her own health plan that kept private insurance. Now, as she begins her campaign, Harris has already reversed some of her earlier, more liberal positions, such as a ban on fracking, which she supported in 2019.
And although Harris tried to operate her background in law enforcement as an advantage in her 2020 presidential campaign, it never found enough support in a party that could not reconcile some of its previous hard-line crime-fighting stances with a time of heightened focus on the issue of police brutality.
Joining Biden’s team – and developing further as Vice President
Still, Harris was at the top of the vice presidential shortlist when Biden was considering his running mate after promising in early 2020 to choose a black woman as his No. 2. He liked Harris, who had formed a close friendship with his now-deceased son Beau, who had been Delaware’s attorney general when she held that job for California.
Her first months as vice president have been anything but glossy. Biden asked her to lead the administration’s diplomatic efforts in Central America to address the root causes of migration to the U.S., which has sparked Republican attacks on border security and remains a political vulnerability. It didn’t assist matters that Harris has stumbled in key interviews, such as a 2021 sit-down with NBC News’ Lester Holt, when she dismissively replied, “I haven’t been to Europe,” when the moderator noted that she hadn’t visited the U.S.-Mexico border.
In her first two years, Harris was also often tied to Washington to assist tie Senate votes. This gave Democrats crucial victories on climate and health care reform, but confined Harris’ ability to travel around the country and meet with voters.
Her visibility grew far greater after the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, as she became the administration’s chief spokesperson on abortion rights, a more natural ambassador than Biden, a lifelong Catholic who has advocated for restrictions on the procedure in the past. She is the first vice president to tour an abortion clinic and speaks about reproductive rights in the broader context of maternal health, particularly for Black women.
Throughout her tenure as vice president, Harris has been careful to remain steadfast to Biden while stressing that she would be ready to step in if needed. This dramatic transition began in tardy June after the first debate between Biden and Trump, in which the president’s gaffes were so disastrous that he was never able to reverse the loss of confidence from other Democrats.
On the way to the beginning of the ticket
After Biden ended his candidacy on July 21, he immediately endorsed Harris. And during the first two weeks of her 2024 presidential bid, enthusiasm among the Democratic base soared, donations poured in, hordes of volunteers showed up at field offices, and the number of supporters grew so much that organizers had to change venues.
The Harris team now believes it has a up-to-date chance to compete in Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina and Georgia – states that Biden abandoned in favor of strengthening the so-called “Blue Wall” states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
“The country can see the Kamala Harris we all know,” said Bakari Sellers, who was national co-chair of her 2020 campaign. “We really didn’t allow the country to see her four years ago.” Sellers said, “We wrapped her in bubble wrap. What people are seeing now is that she is real, that she is talented.”
However, Democrats believe Harris’s political honeymoon will soon be over and she will face increased scrutiny due to her positions in the Biden administration, the economic situation and the unstable situation abroad, particularly in the Middle East. Harris has also not answered detailed questions from journalists or given a formal interview since she began her candidacy.
The Trump campaign is seeking to define Harris as she continues to introduce herself to voters across the country, releasing an ad blaming her for the high number of illegal border crossings at the southern border during the Biden administration and calling her a “failure. Weak. Dangerously liberal.”
The Republican candidate’s supporters have also derided Harris as a person who values diversity, while Trump himself has made ugly racist attacks, falsely claiming that Harris had only emphasized her Native American ancestry in the past and had only recently emphasized her black identity.
His comments are a foretaste of a season of racist and sexist accusations against the man who would be the first woman and the first person of South Asian descent to hold the presidency.
“I didn’t know she was black until she accidentally became black a few years ago and now wants to be known as black,” Trump said during a speech at the annual meeting of the National Association of Black Journalists. “So, I don’t know, is she Native American or is she black?”
In her response, Harris spoke of “the same old show – the division and the disrespect” and said voters “deserve better.”
“The American people deserve a leader who tells the truth, a leader who does not react with hostility and anger when confronted with the facts,” Harris said at a meeting of the Sigma Gamma Rho fraternity in Houston. “We deserve a leader who understands that our differences do not divide us.”
