Win or lose, Harris seen as the face of America’s political future
Mere months after Kamala Harris became California’s junior U. S. senator and her attacks on President Donald Trump made her so popular in some quarters that her name was cast about as a potential Democratic presidential nominee, political pundits quickly warned “she shouldn’t be measuring for drapes in the Oval Office.”
On election night 2020, not even four years later, this 56-yearold Oakland native and daughter of Jamaican and Indian parents was battling to make history as the first woman and first person of color to hold the nation’s second-highest office — vice president of the United States.
Whether Harris and running mate Joe Biden will wrest the White House away from Trump — who has labeled Harris “nasty” and “a monster” — remained unclear Tuesday night as ballots were still being counted in key battleground states. But after months on the campaign trail wearing pearls and Converse high-tops — a look little girls replicated in homemade Halloween costumes across the country — Harris is already seen as the face of America’s political future.
“For so many people to have the opportunity to see someone who looks different than anyone who has run for vice president before — it feels like we’re on the precipice of history,” said Debbie Mesloh, a personal friend who was knocking on doors in Arizona on Tuesday in a lastditch effort to swing the state to Harris and Biden.
With the race so close as the night wore on, Mesloh and her Bay Area volunteers poured themselves martinis when it looked like Trump was winning Florida. But with Arizona looking to flip for Biden, Mesloh was feeling more confident. Still, she said, “I probably won’t sleep tonight.”
A Democratic win in the White House also would set up a scramble for California Gov. Gavin Newsom to fill Harris’ senate seat, a scenario that politicos were wary of contemplating after such a contentious and tight campaign.
Harris, whose first name rhymes with the pet name her stepdaughters gave her — “Mamala” — brought an energetic jolt to the campaign in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic when Trump was calling Biden “Sleepy Joe” and chiding him for “hiding in his basement” holding Zoom campaign events.
A video of Harris holding an umbrella and dancing in the rain at a rally in Jacksonville, Florida, last month went viral.
At a campaign stop in Reno, Nevada, last week, when asked what it meant to be within reach of the vice presidency, she demurred at first. But then, this daughter of a single mother, who was bused across town to school in the 1960s as part of Berkeley’s desegregation plan and chose to attend a historically Black college, answered.
“It is my lived experience,” she said, “to know that there are so many people who are suffering right now that need to be seen, need to be heard.”
After a final day of barnstorming in Pennsylvania and Michigan, Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, a Los Angeles lawyer who has earned his own devoted following on the campaign trail, were planning to join Biden and his wife, Jill, in Biden’s home city of Wilmington, Delaware, for election night.
Meanwhile, Harris’ friends and former colleagues across the Bay Area who have supported every one of Harris’ political campaigns over the past two decades gathered anxiously at outdoor viewing parties and in Zoom meet-ups.
“She becomes the face of something bigger than the party. Her run is emblematic of what women should be doing, reaching for the best and brightest future for all of us,” said Lateefah Simon, 43, a member of the BART board of directors and a community activist who has been close to Harris since they met two decades ago. “A Black woman being on this ticket, but moving through this campaign with so much love and grace, I think it’s heroic.”
Harris has had a career of firsts. She was both the first Black office holder and first woman to serve as San Francisco district attorney and California attorney general. Simon remembers her first day working for Harris in the DA’s office.
“She showed me the wall of all the white men who came before her,” said Simon, who was in her 20s and underdressed that day. “She said, ‘ There’s an expectation that I’m going to right all these wrongs that have happened in the criminal justice system. It’s going to be tough, but, baby girl, let’s get to it.’ She said, ‘Now go home and put on a suit.’ ”
In the U. S. Senate, Harris made a name for herself on the Judiciary Committee grilling Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, then launched her campaign for president last year before 20,000 people gathered in Oakland’s Frank Ogawa Plaza. She ended it, short on funds, at the close of 2019. Three months ago, Biden named her his running mate — making her the third female vice presidential running mate on a major ticket after Democrat Geraldine Ferraro in 1984 and Republican Sarah Palin in 2008.
Biden’s choice was a watershed moment for the Democratic Party and the country, says Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for A merican Politics and Women at Rutgers.
“I can’t ever imagine on the Democratic side, seeing an all-white male ticket again,” Walsh said, “and I think Kamala Harris is the beginning of that.”
Harris had her star turn during the vice presidential debate last month when she repeatedly told an interrupting Vice President Mike Pence, “I’m speaking.” The slogan became a battle cry of sorts for women tired of domineering men “mansplaining” to them, as well as an instant meme and Tshirt logo.
Born at Kaiser Hospital in Oakland, Kamala Devi Harris was raised mostly by her mother, a public university professor, after her parents divorced. She graduated from Howard University in Washington, D.C., before earning her law degree at UC Hastings College of Law in Berkeley.
“She could have gone to Stanford or UC Berkeley, but she chose Howard, a historically black college. It says she was at home in her own skin,” said her pastor, the Rev. Amos Brown, of Third Baptist Church in San Francisco, which was hosting an election watch party Tuesday. “She has a golden opportunity of leading this nation to where it should have been a long time ago.”
Amelia Ashley Ward was nervous on election night. Ward was the first to endorse Harris for district attorney as publisher of the Sun-Reporter newspaper that focuses on the Black community.
“I hope we can send a message to every little girl in the country, where her name is Mandy, Lisa, Shakira or Megan, that no one can determine your future and your path,” Ward said. “You set your goals, and dammit, I hope we kick the hell out of this ceiling.”