Kamala Harris is the 49th Vice President of the United States and the current Vice President-elect. She took office alongside President-elect Joe Biden on January 20, 2021. Harris, who is half-Indian and half-Jamaican, is the first woman, black person, and Asian-American to be chosen vice president. Since 2017, she has served as the junior US Senator from California. She is a member of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, the Judiciary Committee, the Budget Committee, and the Intelligence Select Committee. She is the first South Asian-American woman and the second African-American woman to serve as a United States senator in the country’s history. She is a Democrat. Kamala Harris has consistently strived to implement policies that promote social progressivism during her long political career. For example, as the district attorney of San Francisco, she refused to seek the death penalty for a man convicted of murdering a police officer because she opposes capital punishment. Kamala Harris is one of the few politicians whose goal is to alter the entire system from the within rather than from the outside. She was raised in an inter-cultural environment by her mother, a Tamil Indian surgeon, and her father, a black Stanford University professor. She went on to become a lawyer since she was always interested in social justice. She went into politics after a successful legal career. Kamala Harris ran for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States in the 2020 election, however she dropped out due to a lack of funding.
Childhood and Adolescence
Kamala Devi Harris was born in California on October 20, 1964. Shyamala Gopalan Harris, a Tamil Indian who worked as a breast cancer scientist, was her mother. Donald Harris, a Jamaican economist, is her father and a professor at Stanford University. Harris was close to her maternal grandpa, P. V. Gopalan, an Indian ambassador.
While growing up, she and her younger sister Maya attended both a Hindu temple and a black Baptist Church.
Harris’ parents divorced when she was seven, and her mother was given custody of both children. The girls and their mother then relocated to Montreal, Québec, Canada.
Harris attended Westmount High School in Quebec before going on to Howard University in the United States to study political science and economics.
She returned to California in 1989 to pursue her Juris Doctorate (J.D.) at the University of California Hastings College of the Law. She was admitted to the California State Bar the following year.
Career of Kamala Harris
Kamala Harris worked as a deputy district attorney in Alameda County, California, from 1990 to 1998, prosecuting robbery, homicide, and child rape cases. She worked for the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office in the late 1990s.
Harris was hired as the Chief of the Community and Neighborhood Division by Louise Renne, San Francisco’s elected City Attorney, in 2000.
Harris defeated Terence Hallinan for the position of San Francisco District Attorney in 2003. She is the first black and South Asian woman to hold the role. In November 2007, she was re-elected. She started a program as D.A. that allows first-time drug traffickers to get a high school diploma and find work.
Harris’ book, ‘Smart on Crime: A Career Prosecutor’s Plan to Make Us Safer,’ was published in 2009. She aimed to examine criminal justice from an economic standpoint in the book.
In the 2010s, she served in various positions with the California District Attorneys Association and the National District Attorneys Association.
She ran for Attorney General of California in 2010, when she opposed Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley. She was elected and became the first Jamaican American woman and the first Indian American attorney general in California on January 3, 2011. She was re-elected in November 2014, defeating Ronald Gold.
Kamala Harris won 62 percent of the vote in the 2016 United States Senate race in California, defeating Loretta Sanchez. She was sworn in as the United States Senator representing California on January 3, 2017. Kamala Harris was a leading contender for the Democratic presidential candidacy in 2020. She conducted a strong campaign, but due to a lack of funding, she dropped out and endorsed Joe Biden’s presidential candidacy.
Joe Biden confirmed Kamala Harris as his running mate for the 2020 US presidential election on August 11, 2020. As a result, she became the first black woman to be nominated for vice president by a major political party. As a result of Joe Biden’s victory in the presidential election, Kamala Harris was elected as the United States’ vice president-elect. She took office alongside President-elect Joe Biden on January 20, 2021.
Major Projects of Kamala Harris
As the District Attorney of San Francisco, Kamala Harris created a special Hate Offenses Unit to investigate crimes against LGBT children and teenagers. She was pro-same-sex marriage in California and opposed Propositions 8 and 22, which sought to prohibit same-sex marriage.
She introduced the California Homeowners Bill of Rights, which gives homeowners more “choices” in their fight to maintain their home. This bill outlawed “dual-tracking” and robo-signing, as well as giving the California Attorney General extra authority to investigate financial frauds and convene special grand juries to prosecute multi-county offenses.
In 2012, Harris issued a letter to around 100 mobile app developers, requesting that they adhere to California privacy laws. She also reminded them that if a developer’s program does not display a privacy policy statement during installation, a punishment of up to $2500 per download could be imposed.
She announced the formation of a new organization dubbed the ‘Bureau of Children’s Justice’ on February 12, 2015. Later that year, the bureau was established. The juvenile court system, foster care, childhood trauma, and school truancy are among the topics covered.
Positions on Politics
Kamala Harris opposes the death penalty but believes that each case should be examined individually. When SFPD Officer Isaac Espinoza was assassinated in the Bayview district in 2004, her opposition to the death sentence was put to the test. Harris indicated after his murder that she would not seek the death sentence for the accused, David Hill. He was eventually sentenced to the maximum penalty: life in jail without the possibility of parole.
In 2009, Harris’ opposition to the death sentence was put to the test once more when Edwin Ramos was accused of killing Tony Bologna and his two sons. In this instance, Harris announced that she will pursue life without the possibility of parole rather than the death penalty. She has stated in numerous media interviews that “habitual and chronic truancy” among primary school students should be treated as a crime committed by their parents. She feels there is a correlation between chronic absence in primary school and later-life criminal behavior.
During her stint as San Francisco’s District Attorney, Harris established the Environmental Justice Unit in the office and prosecuted a number of polluting businesses, including Alameda Publishing Corporation and U-Haul. She also argued that environmental security regulations should be strictly enforced.
Kamala Harris charged Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for assaulting and harming Syrian children on April 6, 2017, in response to the Khan Shaykhun chemical strike. She claimed that the president is not just a terrible dictator who abuses his own people, but also a war criminal that other countries must not overlook.
On August 30, 2017, Harris said that she would support single-payer healthcare and co-sponsor the “Medicare for All” bill.
She was one of the senators who signed a letter opposing President Trump’s legal authority to launch an anticipatory strike against North Korea in February 2018.
In May 2018, Kamala Harris issued a statement in response to Trump’s announcement that the United States would withdraw from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, claiming that the decision “endangers our national security and separates us from our closest allies.”
Harris indicated in May 2018 that she will co-sponsor the Marijuana Justice Act. The bill will repeal marijuana’s current designation as a Schedule I substance under the Controlled Substances Act. The effort to decriminalize marijuana, according to Harris, will help the Justice Department avoid enforcing discriminatory prohibitions.
She joined seven other senators in September 2018 to introduce the Climate Risk Disclosure Act.
Harris is a supporter of stricter gun control legislation. The National Rifle Association has given her a “F” rating for her constant support for gun control.
Honors and Awards
Harris was named a “Woman of Power” by the National Urban League in 2004.
In 2005, the National Black Prosecutors Association presented her with the Thurgood Marshall Award.
Personal & Family Life
Since August 22, 2014, Kamala Harris has been married to Douglas Emhoff, a California attorney. She became the stepmother of two children as a result of the marriage.
Maya Harris, her sister, is a political commentator for MSNBC. Tony West, a former top official at the US Justice Department who is now the General Counsel of Uber, is her brother-in-law.
Estimated Net Worth
The estimated net worth of Kamala Harris is about $5 Million.