USA: Kamala Harris is the first woman to be the state’s second-in-command Cosmopolitan | DW

It is easy to explain the political calculus that incoming president Joe Biden followed in appointing Kamala Harris as vice president. It is not easy to understand what her beliefs are.

In 25 years at most, white Americans will no longer be the majority. More and more voters have their roots not in Europe, but in Asia or Africa. By choosing Harris, Biden, “the old white man of Delaware,” wants to convey that he understands the signs of the times.

Harris’ mother, Shyamala Gopalan, a breast cancer researcher, immigrated to America from India in 1960. Her father, Donald J. Harris, a professor of economics, came to the United States from Jamaica.

When she was seven years old, her parents divorced. Kamala and her sister Maya grew up with their mother. Originally in Montreal, Canada, where the scholar was on duty. Later on, Kamala Harris’ hometown (Oakland, California) became the center of the family again.

Social exclusion

Harris often points to his family roots, and talks about negative personal experiences he had in California in the 1970s due to the color of his skin. Equally strong was her mother’s fighting spirit, who was active in the civil rights movement on the University of Berkeley campus.

“Our mother raised us strong women,” Harris wrote in her autobiography, “The Facts We Keep.” “My mother taught us not to sit on the sidelines and complain, but to do something,” says Harris. Kamala Harris put this desire into practice, studying political science and economics at Howard University in Washington, and then law in San Francisco.

In 1990, after passing the entrance exam, she began her career as a public prosecutor and quickly built her reputation as a fighting woman, with a sharp mind.

Kamala Harris, in his recently published biography, describes how he transformed the unfortunate experiences of discrimination into an ambition to be the first. In 2003, a Democratic politician became San Francisco’s first female attorney general.

In 2010, Harris ran for the vacant California attorney general, winning against six opponents. In the United States, this position is a combination of the attorney general and the justice minister position. The investment was made on January 3, 2011, and Kamala Harris was also in this case a pioneer, as the first woman of color for the position.

Controversial ideas

His ideas sometimes sparked controversy. On the one hand, Harris speaks against the death penalty. On the one hand, he put his left wing in his party in his head, when he voted in favor of a sentence of up to one year in prison for parents whose children are repeatedly bullied at school.

Souvenirs in the name of the new president and vice president

In early 2015, Harris announced his candidacy for the Senate, widely supported by his colleagues in the party, including then-US President Barack Obama – whom Harris endorsed his candidacy for president. Vice President Joe Biden was speaking in her favor at the time.

Kamala Harris became the second African American to join the US Senate in January 2017. Kamala Harris has been married to Jewish lawyer Douglas Imhoff since 2014, when she married two children. She herself has no children. Time and time again, Harris has been nominated as a potential candidate for President of the United States by the Democratic Party.

In 2019, when she finally announced her candidacy, Harris was initially seen as a favorite over competitors Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. During the year, however, her popularity waned and she gave up her candidacy in December 2019 due to poor numbers in the polls. Although she clashed several times with Joe Biden in the nomination campaign, he named her Vice President.

She may be the first female president

The vice presidency often has a purely strategic role in training votes that a presidential candidate cannot get. In the case of Kamala Harris, selection in this position has a special meaning.

Joe Biden, at 78, is the oldest president in US history. It is therefore very likely that he will not be able to hold the position until the end of his four-year term. In this case, Kamal Harris became president without the need for early elections. In other words, it will be the first again. This time, the first woman to hold the reins of the White House.