Harris makes history with speech accepting vice presidential nomination
WILMINGTON, Del.— Kamala Harris was poised to make history on Wednesday as the first Black woman to accept a spot on a major party’s presidential ticket, a moment intended to galvanize Democratic voters heading into the fall campaign against President Donald Trump.
This was her second time speaking to the Democratic National Convention. But the stakes were higher than ever before as Harris tries to unite the party behind Joe Biden, while also introducing herself to a national audience that may be tuning into the campaign for the first time.
“For somebody with her wealth of background and experience, she’s still fresh. She’s still new,” said Ohio Rep. Marcia Fudge, a former chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus who endorsed Harris’ 2020 presidential primary run before throwing her support behind Biden in March. “I think people are looking for that.”
Former President Barack Obama was scheduled to speak ahead of Harris on Wednesday, the nation’s first Black president handing off to the first Black woman on a major presidential ticket. Harris was introduced by her sister, Maya, and her niece Meena, as well as Ella Emhoff, her stepdaughter.
The senator’s advisers say Harris was planning to tell her story while highlighting the examples and experiences of others.
“I hope that they see themselves in her when they hear her speak,” Mari Urbina, national director of Indivisible, a progressive advocacy group, said of young first- and second-generation immigrants across the country. “And that they are motivated to understand that, not only do they have to be part of getting us out of this nightmare, but that they also can feel part of this historic change that we’re all about to embark on.”
Harris also planned to describe a nation where everyone is welcome and entitled to equal opportunity and legal protection, and make the case that Biden is uniquely qualified to lead the country, aides say.
In a virtual address Wednesday to the convention’s Asian American and Pacific Islander
Caucus, Harris said she would deliver her speech “knowing that I stand on the shoulders of so many people who are on this call and those who came before us.”
The daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants, Harris has shined in key moments before.
She was lauded for drawing a crowd of 20,000 to the announcement of the start of her presidential campaign in Oakland last year.