Harris will have significant Senate role
With chamber evenly split, VP will be tasked with building coalitions as well as breaking ties
Kamala Harris may be departing the Senate for the White House, but the Bay Area native soon will play an even more pivotal and historic role on Capitol Hill as vice president — the decisive vote.
With this past week’s dramatic special election in Georgia sending two more Democrats to the Senate, the powerful governing body will be divided 50- 50 between Republicans and Democrats. That means Harris, who is already making history as the first woman and Black vice president, also will serve as a tiebreaker if the Senate is split on President Joe Biden’s Cabinet nominees or federal judges.
With Democrats’ legislative agenda on the line, the outgoing California senator will have an outsize influence both in the chamber and behind the scenes in advancing the Biden administration’s efforts on everything from quashing the coronavirus pandemic to climate change.
“She’ll probably spend more time in the U.S. Senate this year than she did last year,” said longtime political strategist Dan
Schnur, noting how Harris spent a good chunk of 2020 campaigning.
The 50- 50 split is rare, happening just three times in the country’s history. In the 1880s and 1950s, the Senate was briefly evenly divided and the body was similarly split for a few months in 2001 when Republican Sen. Trent Lott and Democratic Sen. Tom Daschle worked out an agreement to divide committee memberships in a bid to give Democrats some power and avoid complete gridlock.
The Constitution declares the vice president as the president of the Senate, meaning even though the body will have an equal number of Republican and Demo
cratic senators, Democrats will have control over which bills come to the floor. For the first time in more than a decade, they’ll also control the House of Representatives, led by San Francisco Rep. Nancy Pelosi, and the White House. The last time one party wielded that level of control was during former President Barack Obama’s first two years in office from 2009-10.
That doesn’t mean the more liberal party will be able to do whatever it wants. Most legislation, such as health care bills, not connected to the budget requires 60 votes to close debate and move to a decision. And with the Senate evenly split, wooing moderates such as Joe Manchin, a moderate Democrat from West Virginia, and Susan Collins, a Republican from Maine, will become even more crucial for both parties.
To preser ve his campa ig n promise to be a coalition builder, Biden may not want to lean on Harris too of ten to cast a deciding vote. But behind the scenes, Schnur said, expect him to rely on Harris and her team to be in const a nt contact with Collins and her staff to try to find common g rou nd on where the Ma ine senator c a n join Democrats and help carr y legislation to passage. Over his decades in Washington, Biden developed a reputation as a consummate collaborator on Capitol Hill.
“I think, knowing Joe Biden, that what he wants to do is to build a strong partnership between the president and the vice president, similar to the relationship Bill Clinton had with Al Gore and that Barack Obama had with Joe Biden,” said Leon Panetta, a former Clinton administration chief of staff and former Obama administration Defense Secretary.
“I would imagine now that because Kamala is going to be the deciding vote on the Senate side, that it would make sense that she would play a larger role in terms of trying to build the coalitions necessary to pass the president’s agenda.”
That may be a challenge for Harris. She has spent just four years in the Senate and hasn’t had decades to build up relationships with members of a body where some sitting lawmakers have served since she was a child. Harris is known more for her prosecutorial style and intense questioning of Trump administration officials.
But Barbara O’connor, a professor emeritus of communications at Sacramento State University, said she’s encouraged by Harris’s work so far as vice president- elect alongside Biden and sees her as capable of becoming a consensus builder. There may be a unique opportunity, O’connor said, for lawmakers reeling from Wednesday’s storming of the Capitol by a violent pro-trump mob to form new personal relationships that could lead to collaborative legislative work down the line.
“I think you have a lot of people who are speaking to each other for the first time,” she said. “I’m really pretty optimistic.”
Panetta, a Catholic who said he’s resorting to a lot of Hail Marys these days, also is hopeful.
“A line has been crossed by what happened on Wednesday,” he said during a phone interview from the Panetta Institute for Public Policy at Cal State Monterey Bay, “and it can either motivate people to respond to their better angels or it can inspire their worst instincts.
“You’ve got to be able to build relationships where members know that your word is good,. I know Joe can do that. That’s the nature of how he operates. And I think Kamala can do it as well because that’s what Joe will want.”
And while political analysts have cautioned progressives against getting too optimistic about a packed legislative agenda, Schnur and O’connor think there may be room for compromise in some areas such as climate change.
More regulations? Probably not. More investment in clean energy infrastructure? Entirely possible.
Jack Pitney, a Claremont Mckenna College politics professor and cong ressiona l ex per t, said the two parties also may be able to reach agreements around the rollout of the coronav ir us vaccine and disability issues.
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 progressive Cabinet secretaries, such as Neera Tanden as the head of the Office of Management and Budget and California Attorney General Xavier Becerra as health secretary, who might otherwise be subjected to a drawn- out, bitter partisan battle.
Unlike in the past when some vice presidents have largely stayed out of sight and out of mind, Harris now has an opportunity to make herself particularly useful and visible, and to continue setting herself up for a future presidential run.
“Harris is going to be the second most important person in Washington,” Schnur said, “but possibly the busiest.”