A new first for a breaker of barriers
Harris said to be ‘ideal’ as Biden’s vice president
WASHINGTON – The vice presidential glass ceiling has been broken.
California Sen. Kamala Harris will make history as the first woman elected vice president, now that Joe Biden has captured the White House.
Biden beat Donald Trump four years after Hillary Clinton came up short in her bid to be the first female president.
Harris, 56, was the first African American woman and the first Asian American person on a major party’s presidential ticket. Her husband, entertainment lawyer Doug Emhoff, will be the first “second gentleman.”
Harris has said she expects to work closely with Biden, offering him a perspective shaped by a different background. “It is about a partnership that also is informed by one of the reasons I think Joe asked me to join him, which is that he and I have – we have the same ideals and values but we have very different life experiences,” she said during her final fundraiser for the campaign.
President Barack Obama has called her an “ideal partner” for Biden who is more than prepared for the job as “someone who knows what it’s like to overcome barriers.”
Only the second African American woman elected to the Senate, Harris is the first African American woman to be elected district attorney in San Francisco and attorney general of California.
Biden had faced pressure to choose a woman of color as his running mate because of the large role African Americans – and particularly Black women – have played in the Democratic Party and because of the racial issues thrust into the foreground by the coronavirus pandemic and the deaths of Black Americans at the hands of police.
“There is no vaccine for racism,” Harris said in her vice presidential acceptance speech. “We’ve got to do the work for George Floyd, for Breonna Taylor and for the lives of too many others to name.”
Standing firm: ‘I’m speaking’
Harris is only the third female vice presidential nominee of a major party ticket. Her debate with Vice President Mike Pence was the second-mostwatched vice presidential debate, after the 2008 matchup between Biden and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who was running mate to Republican nominee John McCain.
Her response when Pence tried to cut in on her time, “Mr. Vice President, I’m speaking – I’m speaking,” sparked a meme. T-shirts, face masks and other products emblazoned with those words were quickly for sale on the internet.
Biden’s age contributed to the public’s interest in Harris, as his 77 years increase the chance he might not serve a full term or seek reelection.
Republicans sought to characterize her as member of the “radical left” who would control the more centrist Biden.
Voters had a divided opinion of Harris, with 46% “very” or “somewhat” favorable and 47% “very” or “somewhat” unfavorable, according to a VoteCast survey of 110,405 voters by The Associated Press. The difference was as polarized as the rest of the election. Those viewing her favorably almost entirely – 93% – supported Biden, while 87% of those viewing her unfavorably supported Trump, according to the survey.
Breaking barriers
Biden’s selection of Harris gave the campaign a big fundraising boost. Supporters sent more than $34 million immediately after Biden announced his pick, and she headlined numerous fundraisers throughout the fall. Members of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc., to which Harris belongs, began donating $19.08 – the sorority, the oldest Greek-letter organization established by Black college-educated women, was founded in 1908 at Howard University, her alma mater.
Harris was often sent to energize voters of color, particularly Black Americans. The first candidate on a major party ticket to have attended a historically Black university, Harris campaigned at HBCUs, barbershops and other places of significance for communities of color. For many virtual campaign events, Harris broadcast out of a studio set up at Howard University.
“I say it’s about time a graduate from a state university and a HBCU graduate are in the White House,” Biden said of himself and Harris at a drive-in rally in Atlanta.
Who is Doug Emhoff?
Emhoff was also a regular presence on the campaign trail and formed a bond with Jill Biden, who preceded him as the spouse of a vice president.
Emhoff, who will be the first Jewish American in the vice presidential residence, was a regular Biden surrogate for campaign events targeted to Jewish supporters. He was also “sent all the time to probably the hardest spots,” Biden senior strategic adviser Greg Schultz said during an October campaign event.
Emhoff has been offered lots of advice on how to tackle his new role.
“Everyone’s got an opinion on this, which is nice to hear,” Emhoff said during the campaign. “Which means people are actually excited about the prospect of someone like me in this role – and I get that.”
He hopes to tap his legal background and focus on justice-related issues, particularly “access to justice.”
Emhoff still has the voicemail of a congratulatory call from Biden after Harris and Emhoff got engaged in March 2014.
It was Harris’ first marriage and Emhoff ’s second. His son and daughter – named Cole and Ella after jazz legends Cole Porter and Ella Fitzgerald – came up with their own name for their stepmother: Mamala.
“To my brother and me, you’ll always be ‘Mamala,’ the world’s greatest stepmom,” Ella said in a video montage introducing Harris before her convention speech. “You’re a rock, not just for our dad, but for three generations of our big, blended family.”
Presidential ambitions
Harris had competed against Biden for the Democratic nomination but ended her bid before the first primary votes were cast.
She struggled to place herself in an ideological camp, particularly on how far she would go to enact “Medicare for All.” She also faced criticism from some on the left for her prosecutorial record.
One of her campaign’s biggest moments came during a debate when she challenged Biden over his remarks about working with segregationist senators. She described herself as part of the second class to integrate her school as a child after mandatory school busing, which forced Biden to apologize for his earlier comments.
Although Biden didn’t hold a grudge, Trump immediately called Harris a “phony” after her selection. He frequently made fun of her first name – which is Sanskrit for lotus – and hurled insults at her from his campaign rallies, included calling her a monster.
Women’s groups spent millions on ads to “push back on disinformation and racist, sexist attacks” on Harris and show her in a positive light.
“She has taken on some of the toughest fights ... and she’s done it all with a sense of style,” said the narrator in an ad called “Chucks” that included footage of Harris wearing her signature shoe choice and a young girl dancing in Chuck Taylors.
“Someday soon, anyone will be able to see themselves as president.”
A daughter of immigrants
Harris was born in Oakland, California, to Shyamala Gopalan, a breast cancer scientist who emigrated from India, and Donald Harris, a professor of economics who emigrated from Jamaica.
Her first job was cleaning laboratory pipettes for her mother.
“She fired me. I was awful,” Harris said.
Gopalan would also tell Harris and her sister, “Don’t sit around and complain about things – do something.”
Harris frequently mentions the “stroller’s-eye view” she had of the civil rights movement as her parents marched for social justice – a central part of family discussions.
She wrote in her memoir that she was inspired to become a prosecutor in part because of the prosecutors who went after the Ku Klux Klan and because of Attorney General Robert Kennedy, who sent Justice Department officials to protect the Freedom Riders in 1961.
But she had to defend to friends and family her decision to try to change from the inside, rather than the outside, a justice system they saw as too often offering injustice.
Harris likes to tout a program she championed as district attorney to direct young people arrested for drug crimes into training and counseling programs instead of jail.
As California’s attorney general, she pushed for a tough settlement from five major banks accused of foreclosure abuse. One fellow attorney general who joined the fight was Delaware’s Beau Biden, the former vice president’s oldest son. The two developed a friendship before Beau Biden’s death in 2015 from brain cancer.
After Harris joined the Senate in 2017, she put her prosecutorial skills to work grilling witnesses such as Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Attorney General William Barr and Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
“I thought she was the meanest, the most horrible, the most disrespectful of anybody in the U.S. Senate,” Trump said of Harris’ questioning of Kavanaugh.
Harris has said women who go first know the sacrifices they’ve made and hope to make it easier for women to come up after.
Breaking barriers, she said, involves breaking things.
“And when you break things, you might get cut. You might bleed. It will be painful,” she said more than once. “It will be worth it, every single time.”