Why Kamala Harris will still be a key player

In an evenly split Senate, the incoming vice president will give Democrats an edge

Kamala Harris may be departing the Capitol for the White House but the incoming vice president will still be a key voice on the Hill. With this week’s special election in Georgia appearing to send two more Democrats to the Senate, the powerful governing body is set to be evenly divided, 50-50, between Republicans and Democrats. As vice president, California native Harris could cast the deciding vote on everything from President Joe Biden’s Cabinet nominees to federal judges.

“She’ll probably spend more time in the U.S. Senate this year than she did last year,” said longtime political strategist Dan Schnur, referring to the fact that the outgoing California senator spent a good chunk of 2020 campaigning across the country.

The Constitution says the vice president is the president of the Senate, meaning even though the body would be evenly split, Democrats would have control over which bills come to the floor. For the first time in years, they’ll also control both the House of Representatives, led by San Francisco Rep. Nancy Pelosi, and, of course, the White House.

That doesn’t mean the more liberal party will be able to do whatever it wants. Most legislation not connected to the budget requires 60 votes. And while some Democrats have called for changing the rules to just require a simple majority, it’s not clear they’ll succeed. Joe Manchin, a moderate Democrat from West Virginia, for instance, has said he doesn’t support changing the rules. And with the Senate evenly split, wooing moderates like Manchin and Susan Collins, a Republican from Maine, will become even more crucial for both parties.

To preserve his campaign promise to be a coalition builder, Biden may not want to lean on Harris too often to cast a deciding vote. But behind the scenes, Schnur said, expect him to rely on Harris and her team to be in constant contact with Collins and her staff to try to find common ground on where the Maine senator can help carry legislation to passage.

And while political analysts have cautioned progressives against getting too optimistic about a packed legislative agenda, Schnur thinks there may be room for compromise in some areas like climate change. More regulations? Probably not. More investment in clean energy infrastructure? Entirely possible.

Jack Pitney, a Claremont McKenna College politics professor and congressional expert, said the two parties may also be able to reach agreements around the rollout of the coronavirus vaccine and disability issues.

The 50-50 split is unusual but it’s not completely unprecedented. In the 1880s and 1950s, the Senate was briefly evenly divided, and the body was similarly divided for a few months in 2001. That year, party leaders agreed to split committee memberships equally. De

spite current deep divisions among Republicans and Democrats, and even with Democrats stung by GOP efforts to call Biden’s legitimate victory into question, Pitney expects a similar arrangement to persist.

Neither Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, set to slide from majority to mi

nority leader, or Chuck Schumer of New York, expected to be the new majority leader, are likely to want to spend political capital overturning that precedent, he said.

The Georgia results have already prompted some progressives, scarred after President Donald Trump’s successful appointment of three conservative justices to the Supreme Court, to urge Justice Stephen Breyer to retire and allow

Biden to use his newfound Senate majority to appoint a new, younger liberal justice. Whether Breyer obliges remains to be seen.

Regardless, having Harris stationed to break a tie should allow Biden to quickly push through the confirmation of Cabinet secretaries, such as Neera Tanden as the head of the Office of Management and Budget and California Attorney General Xav ier Becerra as health secre

tary, who might otherwise be subjected to a drawnout, bitter partisan battle and get on with the business of running a deeply divided country. Tanden, who has led the left-leaning Center for American Progress for years, has angered Republicans by vocally criticizing GOP members, while Republicans have opposed Becerra over his endorsement of a “Medicare for all” government-run health care system.