Kamala Harris : Mother of the Movement

Language Watch View source Learn more This article may be affected by the following current event: Withdrawal of Joe Biden from the 2024 United States presidential election. Information in this article may change rapidly as the event progresses. Initial news reports may be unreliable. The last updates to this article may not reflect the most current information. (July 2024) Kamala Devi Harris[b][a] (born October 20, 1964) is an American politician and attorney who is the 49th and current vice president of the United States since 2021, under President Joe Biden. She is the first female vice president and the highest-ranking female official in U.S. history, as well as the first African-American and first Asian-American vice president.[4][5] A member of the Democratic Party, she was previously a U.S. senator from California from 2017 to 2021 and the attorney general of California from 2011 to 2017. Kamala Harris Official portrait, 2021 49th Vice President of the United States Incumbent Assumed office January 20, 2021 President Joe Biden Preceded by Mike Pence United States Senator from California In office January 3, 2017 – January 18, 2021 Preceded by Barbara Boxer Succeeded by Alex Padilla 32nd Attorney General of California In office January 3, 2011 – January 3, 2017 Governor Jerry Brown Preceded by Jerry Brown Succeeded by Xavier Becerra 27th District Attorney of San Francisco In office January 8, 2004 – January 3, 2011 Preceded by Terence Hallinan Succeeded by George Gascón Personal details Born Kamala Devi Harris[a] October 20, 1964 (age 59) Oakland, California, U.S. Political party Democratic Spouse Doug Emhoff ​(m. 2014)​ Parents Donald J. Harris Shyamala Gopalan Relatives Family of Kamala Harris Residence Number One Observatory Circle Education Howard University (BA) University of California, Hastings (JD) Occupation Politicianlawyerauthor Signature Cursive signature in ink Website Campaign website White House website Kamala Harris's voice Duration: 1 minute and 13 seconds.1:13 Harris speaks on the Americans with Disabilities Act Recorded July 26, 2021 Born in Oakland, California, Harris graduated from Howard University and the University of California, Hastings College of the Law. She began her law career in the office of the district attorney (DA) of Alameda County, before being recruited to the San Francisco DA's Office and later the city attorney of San Francisco's office. In 2003, she was elected DA of San Francisco. She was elected attorney general of California in 2010 and re-elected in 2014. Harris served as the junior U.S. senator from California from 2017 to 2021; she defeated Loretta Sanchez in the 2016 Senate election to become the second African-American woman and the first South Asian American to serve in the U.S. Senate.[6][7] As a senator, Harris advocated for gun control laws, the DREAM Act, a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, federal legalization of cannabis, as well as healthcare and taxation reform.[8][9] She gained a national profile for her pointed questioning of Trump administration officials during Senate hearings, including Trump's second Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh.[10] Harris sought the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination but withdrew from the race prior to the primaries. Biden selected her to be his running mate, and their ticket went on to defeat the then incumbent president and vice president, Donald Trump and Mike Pence, in the 2020 election. Harris and Biden were inaugurated on January 20, 2021. After Biden's withdrawal from the 2024 presidential election, Harris launched her own campaign for president with Biden's endorsement. Early life and education See also: Family of Kamala Harris Kamala Devi Harris was born in Oakland, California,[11] on October 20, 1964.[12] Her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, was a Tamil Indian biologist whose work on the progesterone receptor gene stimulated advances in breast cancer research.[13] She moved to the United States from India as a 19-year-old graduate student in 1958, after studying home science at Lady Irwin College in New Delhi. After studying nutrition and endocrinology at the University of California, Berkeley,[14][15] she received her PhD in 1964.[16] Kamala Harris's father, Donald J. Harris, is Jamaican American of Afro-Jamaican ancestry.[17] He is a Stanford University professor of economics (emeritus) who arrived in the United States from British Jamaica in 1961, for graduate study at UC Berkeley, receiving a PhD in economics in 1966.[18] Donald Harris met his future wife Shyamala Gopalan at a college club for African-American students (though Indian American, Shyamala was allowed to join).[19][20] Harris's childhood home on Bancroft Way in Berkeley In 1966, the Harris family moved to Champaign, Illinois (where Kamala's younger sister Maya was born) when her parents took positions at the University of Illinois.[21][22] The family moved around the Midwest, with both parents working at multiple universities in succession over a brief period.[23] Kamala, along with her mother and sister, moved back to California in 1970, while her father remained in the Midwest.[24][25][22] They stayed briefly on Milvia Street in central Berkeley, then at a duplex on Bancroft Way in West Berkeley, an area often called the "flatlands"[26] with a significant black population.[27] When Harris began kindergarten, she was bused as part of Berkeley's comprehensive desegregation program to Thousand Oaks Elementary School, a public school in a more prosperous neighborhood in northern Berkeley[26] which previously had been 95 percent white, and after the desegregation plan went into effect became 40 percent black.[27] Her parents divorced when she was seven. Harris has said that when she and her sister visited their father in Palo Alto on weekends, other children in the neighborhood were not allowed to play with them because they were black.[28] A neighbor regularly took the Harris girls to an African American church in Oakland where they sang in the children's choir,[29][30] and the girls and their mother also frequently visited a nearby African American cultural center.[31] Their mother introduced them to Hinduism and took them to a nearby Hindu temple, where Shyamala occasionally sang.[32] As children, she and her sister visited their mother's family in Madras (now Chennai) several times.[28] She says she has been strongly influenced by her maternal grandfather P. V. Gopalan, a retired Indian civil servant whose progressive views on democracy and women's rights impressed her. Harris has remained in touch with her Indian aunts and uncles throughout her adult life.[32] Harris has also visited her father's family in Jamaica.[33] When she was twelve, Harris and her sister moved with their mother to Montreal, Quebec, where Shyamala had accepted a research and teaching position at the McGill University-affiliated Jewish General Hospital.[34][35] Harris attended a French-speaking primary school, Notre-Dame-des-Neiges,[36] then F.A.C.E. School,[37] and finally Westmount High School[c] in Westmount, Quebec, graduating in 1981.[39] Wanda Kagan, a high school friend of Harris, later told CBC News in 2020 that Harris was her best friend and described how she confided in Harris that she (Kagan) had been molested by her stepfather.[40] She said that Harris told her mother, who then insisted Kagan come to live with them for the remainder of her final year of high school. Kagan said Harris had recently told her that their friendship, and playing a role in countering Kagan's exploitation, helped form the commitment Harris felt in protecting women and children as a prosecutor.[41] After high school, Harris attended Vanier College in Montreal in 1981–1982.[42] She then attended Howard University, a historically black university in Washington, D.C. While at Howard, she interned as a mailroom clerk for California senator Alan Cranston, chaired the economics society, led the debate team, and joined Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority.[41][43] Harris graduated in 1986 with a degree in political science and economics.[44] She then returned to California to attend the University of California, Hastings College of the Law (now University of California College of the Law, San Francisco) through its Legal Education Opportunity Program (LEOP).[45] While at UC Hastings, she served as president of its chapter of the Black Law Students Association.[46] She graduated with a Juris Doctor in 1989[47] and was admitted to the California Bar in June 1990.[48] Early career (1990–2004) In 1990, Harris was hired as a deputy district attorney in Alameda County, California, where she was described as "an able prosecutor on the way up".[49] In 1994, Speaker of the California Assembly Willie Brown, who was then dating Harris, appointed her to the state Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board and later to the California Medical Assistance Commission.[49] Harris took a six-month leave of absence in 1994 from her duties, then afterward resumed working as prosecutor during the years she sat on the boards. Harris's connection to Brown was noted in media reportage as part of a pattern of California political leaders appointing "friends and loyal political soldiers" to lucrative positions on the commissions. Harris has defended her work.[49][50][51] In February 1998, San Francisco district attorney Terence Hallinan recruited Harris as an assistant district attorney.[52] There, she became the chief of the Career Criminal Division, supervising five other attorneys, where she prosecuted homicide, burglary, robbery, and sexual assault cases – particularly three-strikes cases. In 2000, Harris reportedly clashed with Hallinan's assistant, Darrell Salomon,[53] over Proposition 21, which granted prosecutors the option of trying juvenile defendants in Superior Court rather than juvenile courts.[54] Harris campaigned against the measure, which passed. Salomon opposed directing media inquiries about Prop 21 to Harris and reassigned her, a de facto demotion. Harris filed a complaint against Salomon and quit.[55] In August 2000, Harris took a job at San Francisco City Hall, working for city attorney Louise Renne.[56] Harris ran the Family and Children's Services Division representing child abuse and neglect cases. Renne endorsed Harris during her D.A. campaign.[57] District Attorney of San Francisco (2004–2011) See also: Electoral history of Kamala Harris Harris with California representative Nancy Pelosi in 2004 In 2002, Harris prepared to run for District Attorney of San Francisco against Hallinan (the incumbent) and Bill Fazio.[58] Harris was the least-known of the three candidates[59] but persuaded the Central Committee to withhold its endorsement from Hallinan.[57] Harris and Hallinan advanced to the general election runoff with 33 and 37 percent of the vote, respectively.[60] In the runoff, Harris pledged never to seek the death penalty and to prosecute three-strike offenders only in cases of violent felonies.[61] Harris ran a "forceful" campaign, assisted by former mayor Willie Brown, Senator Dianne Feinstein, writer and cartoonist Aaron McGruder, and comedians Eddie Griffin and Chris Rock.[62][63] Harris differentiated herself from Hallinan by attacking his performance.[64] She argued that she left his office because it was technologically inept, emphasizing his 52-percent conviction rate for serious crimes despite an 83-percent average conviction rate statewide.[65] Harris charged that his office was not doing enough to stem the city's gun violence, particularly in poor neighborhoods like Bayview and the Tenderloin, and attacked his willingness to accept plea bargains in cases of domestic violence.[66][67] Harris won with 56 percent of the vote, becoming the first person of color elected as district attorney of San Francisco.[68] Harris ran unopposed for a second term in November 2007.[69] Public safety Non-violent crimes Harris as San Francisco district attorney In the summer of 2005, Harris created an environmental crimes unit.[70] In 2007, Harris and city attorney Dennis Herrera investigated San Francisco supervisor Ed Jew for violating residency requirements necessary to hold his supervisor position;[71] Harris charged Jew with nine felonies, alleging that he had lied under oath and falsified documents to make it appear he resided in a Sunset District home, necessary so he could run for supervisor in the 4th district.[72] Jew pleaded guilty in October 2008 to unrelated federal corruption charges (mail fraud, soliciting a bribe, and extortion)[72] and pleaded guilty the following month in state court to a charge of perjury for lying about his address on nomination forms, as part of a plea agreement in which the other state charges were dropped and Jew agreed to never again hold elected office in California.[73] Harris described the case as "about protecting the integrity of our political process, which is part of the core of our democracy".[73] For his federal offenses, Jew was sentenced to 64 months in federal prison and a $10,000 fine;[74] for the state perjury conviction, Jew was sentenced to one year in county jail, three years' probation, and about $2,000 in fines.[75] Under Harris, the D.A.'s office obtained more than 1,900 convictions for marijuana offenses, including persons simultaneously convicted of marijuana offenses and more serious crimes.[76] The rate at which Harris's office prosecuted marijuana crimes was higher than the rate under Hallinan, but the number of defendants sentenced to state prison for such offenses was substantially lower.[76] Prosecutions for low-level marijuana offenses were rare under Harris, and her office had a policy of not pursuing jail time for marijuana possession offenses.[76] Harris's successor as D.A., George Gascón, expunged all San Francisco marijuana offenses going back to 1975.[76] Harris has expressed support for San Francisco's sanctuary city policy of not inquiring about immigration status in the process of a criminal investigation.[77] Violent crimes In the early 2000s, the San Francisco murder rate per capita outpaced the national average. Within the first six months of taking office, Harris cleared 27 of 74 backlogged homicide cases by settling 14 by plea bargain and taking 11 to trial; of those trials, nine ended with convictions and two with hung juries. She took 49 violent crime cases to trial and secured 36 convictions.[78] From 2004 to 2006, Harris achieved an 87-percent conviction rate for homicides and a 90-percent conviction rate for all felony gun violations.[79] Harris also pushed for higher bail for criminal defendants involved in gun-related crimes, arguing that historically low bail encouraged outsiders to commit crimes in San Francisco. SFPD officers credited Harris with tightening the loopholes defendants had used in the past.[80] In addition to creating a gun crime unit, Harris opposed releasing defendants on their own recognizance if they were arrested on gun crimes, sought minimum 90-day sentences for possession of concealed or loaded weapons, and charged all assault weapons possession cases as felonies, adding that she would seek prison terms for criminals who possessed or used assault weapons and would seek maximum penalties on gun-related crimes.[81] Harris created a Hate Crimes Unit, focusing on hate crimes against LGBT children and teens in schools.[82] In early 2006, Gwen Araujo, a 17-year-old American Latina transgender teenager, was murdered by two men who later used the "gay panic defense" before being convicted of second-degree murder. Harris, alongside Araujo's mother Sylvia Guerrero, convened a two-day conference of at least 200 prosecutors and law enforcement officials nationwide to discuss strategies to counter such legal defenses.[83] Harris subsequently supported A.B. 1160, the Gwen Araujo Justice for Victims Act, advocating that California's penal code include jury instructions to ignore bias, sympathy, prejudice, or public opinion in making their decision, also making mandatory for district attorney's offices in California to educate prosecutors about panic strategies and how to prevent bias from affecting trial outcomes.[84] In September 2006, California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed A.B. 1160 into law; the law put California on record as declaring it contrary to public policy for defendants to be acquitted or convicted of a lesser included offense on the basis of appeals to "societal bias".[84][85] In August 2007, state assemblyman Mark Leno introduced legislation to ban gun shows at the Cow Palace, joined by Harris, police chief Heather Fong, and mayor Gavin Newsom. City leaders contended the shows were directly contributing to the proliferation of illegal guns and spiking homicide rates in San Francisco. (Earlier that month Newsom had signed into law local legislation banning gun shows on city and county property.) Leno alleged that merchants drove through the public housing developments nearby and illegally sold weapons to residents.[86] While the bill would stall, local opposition to the shows continued until the Cow Palace Board of Directors in 2019 voted to approve a statement banning all future gun shows.[87] Reform efforts Death penalty Harris has said life imprisonment without parole is a better and more cost-effective punishment than the death penalty,[88] and has estimated that the resultant cost savings could pay for a thousand additional police officers in San Francisco alone.[88] During her campaign, Harris pledged never to seek the death penalty.[61] After a San Francisco Police Department officer, Isaac Espinoza, was shot and killed in 2004, U.S. senator (and former San Francisco mayor) Dianne Feinstein,[89] U.S. senator Barbara Boxer, Oakland mayor Jerry Brown, and the San Francisco Police Officers Association pressured Harris to reverse that position, but she did not.[90] (Polls found that seventy percent of voters supported Harris's decision.)[91] When Edwin Ramos, an illegal immigrant and alleged MS-13 gang member, was accused of murdering a man and his two sons in 2009,[92] Harris sought a sentence of life in prison without parole, a decision Mayor Gavin Newsom backed.[93] Recidivism and re-entry initiative In 2004, Harris recruited civil rights activist Lateefah Simon to create the San Francisco Reentry Division.[94] The flagship program was the Back on Track initiative, a first-of-its-kind reentry program for first-time nonviolent offenders aged 18–30.[95] Initiative participants whose crimes were not weapon- or gang-related would plead guilty in exchange for a deferral of sentencing and regular appearances before a judge over a twelve- to eighteen-month period. The program maintained rigorous graduation requirements, mandating completion of up to 220 hours of community service, obtaining a high-school-equivalency diploma, maintaining steady employment, taking parenting classes, and passing drug tests. At graduation, the court would dismiss the case and expunge the graduate's record.[96] Over six years, the 200 people graduated from the program had a recidivism rate of less than ten percent, compared to the 53 percent of California's drug offenders who returned to prison within two years of release. Back on Track earned recognition from the U.S. Department of Justice as a model for reentry programs. The DOJ found that the cost to the taxpayers per participant was markedly lower ($5,000) than the cost of adjudicating a case ($10,000) and housing a low-level offender ($50,000).[97] In 2009, a state law (the Back on Track Reentry Act, A.B. 750) was enacted, encouraging other California counties to start similar programs.[98][99] Adopted by the National District Attorneys Association as a model, prosecutor offices in Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Atlanta have used Back on Track as a template for their own programs.[100][101][102] Truancy initiative In 2006, as part of an initiative to reduce the city's skyrocketing homicide rate, Harris led a city-wide effort to combat truancy for at-risk elementary school youth in San Francisco.[103] Declaring chronic truancy a matter of public safety and pointing out that the majority of prison inmates and homicide victims are dropouts or habitual truants, Harris's office met with thousands of parents at high-risk schools and sent out letters warning all families of the legal consequences of truancy at the beginning of the fall semester, adding she would prosecute the parents of chronically truant elementary students; penalties included a $2,500 fine and up to a year in jail.[104] The program was controversial when introduced. In 2008, Harris issued citations against six parents whose children missed at least fifty days of school, the first time San Francisco prosecuted adults for student truancy. San Francisco's school chief, Carlos Garcia, said the path from truancy to prosecution was lengthy, and that the school district usually spends months encouraging parents through phone calls, reminder letters, private meetings, hearings before the School Attendance Review Board, and offers of help from city agencies and social services; two of the six parents entered no plea but said they would work with the D.A.'s office and social service agencies to create "parental responsibility plans" to help them start sending their children to school regularly.[105] By April 2009, 1,330 elementary school students were habitual or chronic truants, down 23 percent from 1,730 in 2008, and down from 2,517 in 2007 and from 2,856 in 2006.[106] Harris's office prosecuted seven parents in three years, with none jailed.[106] Attorney General of California (2011–2017) Main article: Kamala Harris's tenure as Attorney General of California Harris speaking at a Democratic rally at the University of Southern California in October 2010 Harris's official Attorney General portrait In the 2010 general election, she faced Republican Los Angeles County district attorney Steve Cooley.[107][108] Harris was sworn in on January 3, 2011; she was the first woman, the first African American, and the first South Asian American to hold the office of Attorney General in the state's history.[109] Harris announced her intention to run for re-election in February 2014.[110] On November 4, 2014, Harris was re-elected against Republican Ronald Gold, winning 57.5 percent of the vote to 42.5 percent.[111] In 2011, Harris obtained two of the largest recoveries in the history of California's False Claims Act over excess state Medi-Cal and federal Medicare payments.[112][113] In 2012, Harris leveraged California's economic clout to obtain better terms in the National Mortgage Settlement against the nation's five largest mortgage servicers.[114] Harris worked with Assembly speaker John Pérez and Senate president pro tem Darrell Steinberg in 2013 to introduce the Homeowner Bill of Rights, considered one of the strongest protections nationwide against aggressive foreclosure tactics.[115] In 2013, Harris declined to authorize a civil complaint against OneWest Bank, owned by an investment group headed by Steven Mnuchin (then a private citizen);[116] Harris was later criticized for accepting a donation from Mnuchin.[117] In 2015, Harris obtained a $1.2 billion judgment against for-profit Corinthian Colleges for false advertising and deceptive marketing targeting vulnerable, low-income students and misrepresenting job placement rates to students, investors, and accreditation agencies.[118] Harris opposed California's ban on affirmative action.[119] She asked the Supreme Court to "reaffirm its decision that public colleges and universities may consider race as one factor in admissions decisions."[120][121] In February 2012, Harris announced an agreement with Apple, Amazon, Google, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, Research in Motion, and Facebook to mandate that apps sold in their stores display prominent privacy policies informing users of what private information they were sharing, and with whom.[122][123] In 2015, Harris secured two settlements with Comcast totaling $59 million over allegations that it posted online the names, phone numbers and addresses of tens of thousands of customers, and discarded paper records without first omitting or redacting private customer information.[124] In November 2013, Harris launched the California Department of Justice's Division of Recidivism Reduction and Re-Entry.[125] Harris's record on wrongful conviction cases as attorney general has engendered criticism from academics and activists.[126] After the 2011 United States Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Plata declared California's prisons so overcrowded they inflicted cruel and unusual punishment, Harris fought federal supervision, explaining "I have a client, and I don't get to choose my client."[127] In September 2014, Harris's office argued unsuccessfully in a court filing against the early release of prisoners, citing the need for inmate firefighting labor.[128] After being elected, Harris declared her office would not defend Prop 8, a state constitutional amendment providing that only marriages "between a man and a woman" are valid,[129] and in February 2013 she filed an amicus curiae brief arguing Prop 8 was unconstitutional.[130] In 2014, Attorney General Kamala Harris co-sponsored legislation to ban the gay and trans panic defense in court,[131] which passed.[132] Harris appealed a federal ruling in favor of a transgender inmate's request for sex reassignment surgery to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals,[133] arguing that psychotherapy,[134] and hormone therapy were sufficient medical treatment,[135] although she said she ultimately pushed the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to change their policy.[136] In 2019, Harris stated that she took "full responsibility" for briefs her office filed in this case and others involving access to gender-affirming surgery for trans inmates.[137] Harris visiting Peterson Middle School (Santa Clara Unified School District) in 2010 In 2011, Harris urged criminal penalties for parents of truant children, allowing the court to defer judgment if the parent agreed to a mediation period to get their child back in school. Critics charged that local prosecutors implementing her directives were overzealous in their enforcement and Harris's policy adversely affected families.[138] Harris prioritized environmental protection as attorney general, first securing a $44 million settlement to resolve all damages and costs associated with the Cosco Busan oil spill.[139] In the aftermath of the 2015 Refugio oil spill, Harris toured the coastline and directed her office's resources and attorneys to investigate possible criminal violations.[140] From 2015 to 2016, Harris secured multiple multi-million-dollar settlements with fuel service companies Chevron, BP, ARCO, Phillips 66, and ConocoPhillips to resolve allegations they failed to properly monitor the hazardous materials in their underground gasoline storage tanks.[141][142][143] In summer 2016, automaker Volkswagen AG agreed to pay up to $14.7 billion to settle a raft of claims related to so-called Defeat Devices used to cheat emissions standards on its diesel cars.[144] From left to right: LAPD chief Charlie Beck, Harris, and civil rights lawyer Constance L. Rice celebrate the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In 2012, Harris announced that the California Department of Justice had improved its DNA testing capabilities, clearing California's DNA backlog for the first time.[145] In 2015, Harris conducted a 90-day review of implicit bias in policing and police use of deadly force. In April 2015, Harris introduced the first of its kind "Principled Policing: Procedural Justice and Implicit Bias" training, to help law enforcement officers overcome barriers to neutral policing and rebuild trust between law enforcement and the community.[146] The same year, Harris's California Department of Justice became the first statewide agency in the country to require all its police officers to wear body cameras.[147] In 2016, Harris announced a patterns and practices investigation into purported civil rights violations and use of excessive force by the two largest law enforcement agencies in Kern County, California.[148] In 2016, Harris's office seized videos and other information from the apartment of an antiabortion activist who had made secret recordings and then accused Planned Parenthood doctors of illegally selling fetal tissue.[149][150] In 2011, Harris created the eCrime Unit within the California Department of Justice, a 20-attorney unit targeting technology crimes.[151] In 2015, several purveyors of so-called revenge porn sites based in California were arrested, charged with felonies, and sentenced to lengthy prison terms.[152][153] In 2016, Harris announced the arrest of Backpage CEO Carl Ferrer on felony charges of pimping a minor, pimping, and conspiracy to commit pimping, alleging that 99 percent of Backpage's revenue was directly attributable to prostitution-related ads, many of which involved victims of sex trafficking, including children under the age of 18.[154] AG Harris announces the arrest of 101 gang members in Los Banos, California. During her term as attorney general, Harris's office oversaw major investigations and prosecutions targeting transnational criminal organizations for their involvement in violent crime, fraud schemes, drug trafficking, and smuggling.[155][156][157][158][159][160][161][162][163] In summer 2012, Harris signed an accord with the Attorney General of Mexico, Marisela Morales, to improve coordination of law enforcement resources targeting transnational gangs engaging in the sale and trafficking of human beings across the San Ysidro border crossing.[164] U.S. Senate (2017–2021)