She has already broken barriers, and now Kamala Harris could shatter several more after President Joe Biden abruptly ended his re-election bid and endorsed her.
Mr Biden announced on Sunday that he was stepping aside after a disastrous debate performance catalysed fears that the 81-year-old was too frail for a second term.
Ms Harris is the first woman, black person and person of South Asian descent to serve as vice president. If she becomes the Democratic nominee and defeats Republican candidate Donald Trump in November, she would be the first woman to serve as president.
Mr Biden said on Sunday that choosing Ms Harris as his running mate was “the best decision I’ve made” and endorsed her as his successor.
My fellow Democrats, I have decided not to accept the nomination and to focus all my energies on my duties as President for the remainder of my term. My very first decision as the party nominee in 2020 was to pick Kamala Harris as my Vice President. And it’s been the best… pic.twitter.com/x8DnvuImJV
Advertisement— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) July 21, 2024
“Democrats — it’s time to come together and beat Trump,” he wrote on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. “Let’s do this.”
Ms Harris described Mr Biden’s decision to step aside as a “selfless and patriotic act,” saying he was “putting the American people and our country above everything else.”
“I am honoured to have the President’s endorsement and my intention is to earn and win this nomination,” Ms Harris said.
“Over the past year, I have travelled across the country, talking with Americans about the clear choice in this momentous election.”
Prominent Democrats followed Mr Biden’s lead by swiftly coalescing around Ms Harris on Sunday. However, her nomination is not a foregone conclusion, and there have been suggestions that the party should hold a lightning-fast “mini primary” to consider other candidates before its convention in Chicago next month.
A recent poll from the AP-NORC Centre for Public Affairs Research found that about six in 10 Democrats believe Ms Harris would do a good job in the top slot. About two in 10 Democrats do not believe she would, and another two in 10 say they do not know enough to say.
A former prosecutor and US senator from California, Ms Harris’ own bid for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination imploded before a single primary vote was cast.
She later became Mr Biden’s running mate, but she struggled to find her footing after taking office as vice president. Assigned to work on issues involving migration from Central America, she was repeatedly blamed by Republicans for problems with illegal border crossings.
However, Ms Harris found more prominence as the White House’s most outspoken advocate for abortion rights after the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade in 2022. She has also played a key role in reaching out to young people and voters of colour.
In addition, Ms Harris’ steady performance after Mr Biden’s debate debacle solidified her standing among Democrats in recent weeks.
Even before Mr Biden’s endorsement, Ms Harris was widely viewed as the favourite to replace him on the ticket. With her foreign policy experience and national name recognition, she has a head start over potential challengers, including California Gov Gavin Newsom, Michigan Gov Gretchen Whitmer and Pennsylvania Gov Josh Shapiro.
Ms Harris will seek to avoid the fate of Hubert Humphrey, who as vice president won the Democratic nomination in 1968 after Lyndon Johnson declined to run for re-election amid national dissatisfaction over the Vietnam War. Mr Humphrey lost that year to Republican Richard Nixon.
Vice presidents are always in line to step into the top job if the president dies or is incapacitated. However, Ms Harris has faced an unusual level of scrutiny because of Mr Biden’s age. He was the oldest president in history, taking office at 78 and announcing his reelection bid at 80. Ms Harris is 59.
She addressed the question of succession in an interview with The Associated Press during a trip to Jakarta in September 2023.
“Joe Biden is going to be fine, so that is not going to come to fruition,” she stated. “But let us also understand that every vice president — every vice president — understands that when they take the oath they must be very clear about the responsibility they may have to take over the job of being president.”
“I’m no different.”
Harris was born on October 20, 1964, in Oakland, California, to parents who met as civil rights activists.
Her hometown and nearby Berkeley were at the heart of the racial and social justice movements of the time, and Harris was both a product and a beneficiary.
She spoke often about attending demonstrations in a pushchair and growing up around adults “who spent full time marching and shouting about this thing called justice.” In first grade, she was bused to school as part of the second class to integrate Berkeley public education.
Ms Harris’ parents divorced when she was young, and she was raised by her mother alongside her younger sister, Maya.
She attended Howard University, a historically black school in Washington, and joined the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, which became a source of sisterhood and political support over the years.
After graduating, Ms Harris returned to the San Francisco Bay Area for law school and chose a career as a prosecutor, a move that surprised her activist family.
She said she believed that working for change inside the system was just as important as agitating from outside. By 2003, she was running for her first political office, taking on the longtime San Francisco district attorney.
Few city residents knew her name, and Ms Harris set up an ironing board as a table outside grocery stores to meet people. She won and quickly showed a willingness to chart her own path. Months into her tenure, Ms Harris declined to seek the death penalty for the killer of a young police officer slain in the line of duty, fraying her relationship with city cops.
The episode did not stop her political ascent. In late 2007, while still serving as district attorney, she was knocking on doors in Iowa for then-candidate Barack Obama. After he became president, Mr Obama endorsed her in her 2010 race for California attorney general.
Once elected to statewide office, she pledged to uphold the death penalty despite her moral opposition to it. She refused to defend Proposition 8, a voter-backed initiative banning same-sex marriage. Ms Harris also played a key role in a 25 billion dollars settlement with the nation’s mortgage lenders following the foreclosure crisis.
As killings of young black men by police received more attention, Ms Harris implemented some changes, including tracking racial data in police stops, but did not pursue more aggressive measures such as requiring independent prosecutors to investigate police shootings.
Ms Harris’ record as a prosecutor would eventually dog her when she launched a presidential bid in 2019, as some progressives and younger voters demanded swifter change. But during her time on the job, she also forged a fortuitous relationship with Beau Biden, Joe Biden’s son who was then Delaware’s attorney general. Beau Biden died of brain cancer in 2015, and his friendship with Ms Harris figured heavily years later as his father chose her to be his running mate.
Ms Harris married entertainment lawyer Douglas Emhoff in 2014, and she became stepmother to his two children, Ella and Cole, who referred to her as “Momala”.
Ms Harris had a rare opportunity to advance politically when Sen Barbara Boxer, who had served more than two decades, announced she would not run again in 2016.
In office, Ms Harris quickly became part of the Democratic resistance to Mr Trump and gained recognition for her pointed questioning of his nominees. In one memorable moment, she pressed now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh on whether he knew any laws that gave government the power to regulate a man’s body. He did not, and the line of questioning galvanised women and abortion rights activists.
A little more than two years after becoming a senator, Ms Harris announced her campaign for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. But her campaign was marred by infighting and she failed to gain traction, ultimately dropping out before the Iowa caucuses.
Eight months later, Mr Biden selected Ms Harris as his running mate. As he introduced her to the nation, Mr Biden reflected on what her nomination meant for “little black and brown girls who so often feel overlooked and undervalued in their communities.”
“Today, just maybe, they’re seeing themselves for the first time in a new way, as the stuff of presidents and vice presidents,” he said.
