First Chamber member Kamala Harris on Tuesday became the first Black and South Asian American woman to be elected to national office by a major political party, when former Vice President Joe Biden appointed the moderate former prosecutor this fall.
Harris, 55, has spent her career breaking barriers.
In California, she was the first woman – and the first Black woman – to serve as the state’s top legislators. She is the first Black woman from California to serve in the U.S. Senate, and second from any state, after “Carol Moseley Brown of Illinois.” Harris is also the first person of Indian descent to appear on a presidential card.
And if Biden defeats President Trump in November, Harris would become the first woman in American history to serve as vice president.
Harris follows Democrat Geraldine Ferraro, in 1984, and Republican Sarah Palin, in 2008, as only the third woman elected as the running mate on a presidential card. Both of those campaigns lost to icons of the opposition parties – Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama respectively.
During the Democratic presidential primary, Harris, who fell before the first round of voting, often found himself stuck between the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, led by Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, and its mediocre establishment, headlined by Biden. The leftist criticized Harris’ record of criminal justice, from her election as a district attorney in San Francisco to her time as attorney general of California.
Those concerns were heightened after Harris’ spectacular entry into the race in January 2019, when her announcement was greeted by an adoring crowd of 20,000 outside in Oakland, California. Her campaign would be the most expansive conducted by any Black woman in American political history. Decades after Shirley Chisholm ran for president in 1972, Harris raised more than $ 35 million over 11 months, despite the challenges facing black women candidates in money.
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