Kamala: A woman of many firsts

RUNNING MATE Born to two immigrant parents, an Indian mother and a Black father, the 55-year-old first-time senator from California is now the first American of Indian and Asian descent to run for vice president

nWASHINGTON: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

(Above) This undated photo provided by the Kamala Harris campaign in April 2019 shows her as a child at her mother’s lab; (right) Kamala Harris, left, with her sister Maya and mother Shyamala outside their apartment in Berkeley.

nEDUCATION

nShe spent her high school years living in French-speaking Canada – her mother was teaching at Mcgill University in Montreal. After her parents divorced, Harris was raised by her mother. She says her mother adopted black culture and immersed her two daughters – Kamala and her younger sister Maya – in it

DOUGLAS EMHOFF Lawyer

Kamala has been married to her husband Doug for the past six years. She is the stepmother of two children,

Ella and

Cole

CAREER

nShe became the top prosecutor for San Francisco in 2003, before being elected the first woman and the first black person to serve as California’s attorney general in 2010, the top lawyer in America’s most populous state

Harris serves on the senate select committee on intelligence that deals with sensitive national security and international threats. She also serves on the senate homeland security and governmental affairs committee, where she oversees the government’s response to emergencies, including Covid-19

nissue 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

nnFile photo of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. REUTERS 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

A critique-turned ally of her former rival Biden, Harris had her own presidential aspirations, which she suspended by the end of 2019, saying she lacked the financial resources to continue her campaign. She is one of only three Asian Americans in the Senate and she’s the first Indian-american ever to serve in the chamber

BORN ON OCTOBER 20, 1964, HARRIS WAS NAMED KAMALA DEVI BY HER MOTHER, SHYAMALA GOPALAN, WHO WAS FROM CHENNAI

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.