US Senator from California, Kamala Harris, is named as choice for Vice President by Joe Biden, the US Democratic Presidential nominee to challenge President Donald Trump in November elections.
“I have the great honor to announce that I’ve picked @KamalaHarris — a fearless fighter for the little guy, and one of the country’s finest public servants — as my running mate,” Biden, 77, said on Twitter.
Taking to Twitter shortly after the announcement, Harris said she was “honored” to join Biden as nominee for vice president, and would “do what it takes to make him our Commander-in-Chief.”
“@JoeBiden can unify the American people because he’s spent his life fighting for us. And as president, he’ll build an America that lives up to our ideals,” she wrote.
For Harris, being elevated onto a Democratic presidential ticket is the political moment of a lifetime. And if they win, the 55-year-old Californian becomes the automatic frontrunner in the race for the 2024 or 2028 Democratic nomination.
Harris has been a barrier-breaker for much of her political career.
Her parents were immigrants to the United States — her father from Jamaica, her mother from India. She was the first black woman elected as California’s attorney general, and only the second black woman, and the first woman of South Asian heritage to be elected to the US Senate.
Biden’s team stated that the two Democrats will deliver remarks Wednesday in Wilmington, Delaware as they kick off their joint campaign.
Harris had clashed with Biden during the first Democratic debate of the 2020 race, chiding the former senator over his opposition to 1970s busing programs that forced integration of segregated schools.
It provided her with a breakout moment which proved short-lived: Harris dropped out of the race in December 2019 and endorsed Biden in March.
Despite their debate clash, Biden has made it clear he does not hold a grudge, describing Harris as a “first-rate intellect, a first-rate candidate and a real competitor.”
The Republican National Committee swiftly reacted to the announcement, saying Harris has “extreme” political positions that are far more leftist than the more moderate Biden’s.
Her Career
“My mother used to have a saying,” the 55-year-old Harris is fond of recounting. “She would say to me ‘You may be the first to do many things but make sure you’re not the last.’”
Harris was the first black attorney general of California, the first woman to hold the post, and the first woman of South Asian heritage to be elected to the US Senate.
Harris was born on October 20, 1964 in Oakland, California.
Her father, Donald Harris, was an economics professor and her mother Shyamala Gopalan, was a breast cancer researcher.
Her parents separated when Harris was about five years old and she and her sister Maya were raised by her mother, who died in 2009.
Harris earned her undergraduate degree at historically black Howard University in Washington and is a proud member of “Alpha Kappa Alpha,” the oldest African-American sorority.
She earned her law degree from the University of California, Hastings College of Law, became a prosecutor and served two terms as a district attorney in San Francisco.
She was elected attorney general of California in 2010 and re-elected in 2014, the same year she married Douglas Emhoff, a lawyer with two children from a previous marriage.
As attorney general, Harris developed a working relationship with Biden’s late son Beau, who held the same position in the state of Delaware.
(AFP)
