Indian-origin Harris is Biden’s running mate
Daughter of Tamil mother, Jamaican father first woman of colour on major ticket
WASHINGTON: Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, has named Kamala Harris, who is of mixed Indian and Black heritage, as his running mate in a much anticipated announcement that was described as “historic” and “seismic” by Democrats, including many ecstatic Indian-Americans and non-partisan observers.
Biden announced his pick for the vice president’s job in a tweet late Tuesday afternoon as speculation reached a fever pitch on all leading TV channels and social media. “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,” the former US vice president wrote on Twitter.
His campaign followed up with a more expansive explanation of the pick. “Joe knows more about the importance of the Vice Presidency than just about anyone, and he is confident that Kamala Harris will be the best partner for him to finally get the country back on track,” it said in a statement, and added, “Kamala will be ready to tackle the work that is needed to heal our country on Day One of the Biden-Harris Administration.”
In her first public response to the announcement, Harris wrote on Twitter: “@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. I’m honored to join
INDIAN-AMERICAN Harris was born to two immigrant parents. Her father was from Jamaica and her mother from Chennai
him as our party’s nominee for Vice President, and do what it takes to make him our Commander-in-Chief.”
A win in November will make Harris the first female vice president of the United States and set her up for the presidency in 2024, at the end of Biden’s first term, or 2028. Most vice presidents have gone on to run for the top job themselves and win, with some exceptions such as Al Gore.
President Donald Trump, who had earlier called Harris a “fine choice” if picked by Biden, felt differently and accorded the announcement the full Trump treatment. He slammed her as
TRAILBLAZER Elected the first woman and the first Black person to serve as California’s attorney general in 2010
“nasty” and “the meanest, the most horrible, most disrespectful” for her grilling of Brett Kavanaugh at his senate confirmation hearing for the Supreme Court. Harris was not a surprise pick as she had been on everyone’s shortlist of Biden’s choices. In recent days, the former vice president had been focussed on three — Harris, former national security adviser Susan Rice and Congresswoman Karen Baas. Some days ago, Biden may have tipped his hand inadvertently when notes he held during a press interaction showed several check-marks against her name.
The 55-year-old first-time senator
MANY FIRSTS Became the first Black and Indian-American woman to represent California in the US Senate in 2016
from California is now the first American of Indian and Asian descent to run for vice president. She is also the first AfricanAmerican of a major party and only the third woman yet to run for that office, after Democrat Geraldine Ferraro and Republican Sarah Palin. The US hasn’t had a female vice-president, or president, yet.
Harris’s mother Shyamala Gopalan (Harris by marriage) came to the US from Chennai. She was a cancer researcher, who raised Harris and the younger daughter Maya Harris, as a single mother.
WASHINGTON:It’s not Cam-el-uh. Not Kuhmahl-uh, either. Or Karmel-uh. It’s Kamala. Kamala Harris.
This is from an ad Harris, now 55, ran in 2016 when she was running for the US senate from California. It was meant for Californians to whom Harris was not exactly a stranger. She had been in public life for years in the state by then and was then serving the second of her two four-year terms as the state’s top law enforcement officer, the attorney general.
On Tuesday night, four years after those ads and Harris’s successful senate run, Tucker Carlson, host of America’s highest-rated prime-time cable news show, lost it when a guest insisted on air that Carlson correctly pronounce the name of the person Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, picked to be his running mate.
“So it begins; you’re not allowed to criticize Ka-MAL-a Harris, or KAM-a-la Harris...or whatever?” Carlson said in exasperation, before conceding, “Ok look, I unintentionally mispronounced her name.”
The Biden-Harris campaign might want to send Carlson a link to her senate race ad — which featured a bunch of children explaining how to get the name right — or just air it again.
Born on October 20, 1964, Harris was named Kamala Devi by her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, who was from Chennai. “Our classical Indian names harked back to our Indian heritage and we were raised with a strong awareness of and appreciation for India culture,” Harris wrote in The Truth We hold: An American journey, her autobiography. Her only sibling — a younger sister — is named Maya Harris. Their last names are from their father Jonathan Harris, who is from Jamaica.
The parents separated when Harris was seven, and five years later, the family moved to Montreal, Canada, where her mother had accepted a research position at a university.
After graduating from Howard University, a predominantly Black university in Washington DC years later, Harris went on to study law at Hastings, University of Californian, in San Francisco. She became a lawyer in 1990.
Harris returned to her hometown Oakland, and joined the Alameda county district attorney’s office as a deputy in 1991, to begin shortly a career that would set her on path to the vice-presidential nomination on Tuesday, as the first Indian-American, first South Asian-American and the first Asian-American male or female to ever make it onto a presidential ticket. That’s from her mother’s side. On her father’s side, she is the first AfricanAmerican male or female to run for vice-president on a major party’s ticket.
And, another series of “firsts” awaits her on November 3, election night, if the Biden-Harris ticket prevails.
In 2003, Harris was elected district attorney in San Francisco. That would be the start of the “firsts”. Her election made her the first woman district attorney of the city, the first Black woman and the first South Asian woman in the state to hold that job and, of course, the first Indian-American, of any gender.
That election also handed her one of her life’s most enduring controversies. On the first year on the job, a San Francisco police officer was killed on duty by a man using an automatic rifle. Harris, who had run for office as an opponent of the death penalty, did not seek capital punishment for the accused, which earned her the hostility of the police force in the city and the state. And it is an issue that is cited in almost every profile of her written since.
The Trump campaign will not pass it up as an opportunity to portray the Biden-Harris ticket as weak on law enforcement, as a contrast to the president’s strong stand on the issue in the backdrop of the ongoing anti-racism protests and demand from certain quarters for defunding the police. It started Tuesday night, in fact. “She is now trying to bury her egregious record as a prosecutor in order to appease the anti-police extremists that are now controlling the radicalized Democrat Party,” said Katrina Pierson, a senior Trump 2020 adviser. “Kamala is in this for political conveshe nience, it is clearly her primary motivator.”
The Trump campaign and Republicans by and large understood well how formidable Harris can be. President Trump himself had conceded recently she would be a “fine choice” for Biden. Now, however, it’s different. “I thought was the meanest, the most horrible, most disrespectful of anybody in the US senate,” Trump said to reporters, referring to senator Harris’s grilling of Brett Kavanaugh, the president’s nominee for the Supreme Court at a bruising confirmation hearing.
Harris has built over the years a formidable reputation as, among other things, a tough and tenacious interrogator. From her seat on the senate judicial committee, she could nail squirming witnesses with a steady, unrelenting gaze and unwavering questioning,which invariably went viral.
Mike Pence, the vice-president, might find himself in that seat next.
BORN ON OCTOBER 20, 1964, HARRIS WAS NAMED KAMALA DEVI BY HER MOTHER, SHYAMALA GOPALAN, WHO WAS FROM CHENNAI