Everything You Should Know About Kamala Harris, Joe Biden’s Vice Presidential Running Mate
As the wait continues for who will be the next President of the United States of America, one name that is on everyone’s lips is Kamala Harris.
Harris is the running mate of Joe Biden, the leading candidate.
She will be the first African American, and first Asian American vice president in the history of the United States if Joe Biden is announced the winner.
Here are all the things you should know about her.
1.Kamala Devi Harris was born on October 20, 1964 in Oakland, California, United States.
2.Her father, Donald Harris, an economist is from Jamaica while her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, a cancer researcher is from India.
3.Her parents divorced when she was 7 and at age 12 she moved with her mother and sister, Maya to Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
4. She visited her home country, India every couple of years where she was influenced by her grandfather, a high-ranking government official who fought for Indian independence, and grandmother, an activist.
5.Harris led a successful demonstration at the age 13 in front of their apartment building in Montreal in protest of a policy that banned children from playing on the lawn.
6. She attended Westmount High School in Quebec, where she founded a dance troupe with a friend.
7. She returned to the United States to attend Howard University in Washington, D.C. where she bagged a Bachelor’s degree in political science and economics in 1986.Harris then enrolled at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, earning her J.D. in 1989.
8.Harris began her career as a deputy district attorney in Alameda County in 1990, after admittance to the State Bar of California. In this position, she prosecuted cases of gang violence, drug trafficking, and sexual abuse.
9.She became managing attorney of the Career Criminal Unit in the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office in 1998, and in 2000 she was appointed chief of its Community and Neighborhood Division, during which time she established the state’s first Bureau of Children’s Justice.
10.In 2003, she defeated incumbent Terence Hallinan, her former boss, to become a San Francisco district attorney.
11.She became the first African American and the first woman in California to become the Los Angeles County District Attorney in 2010.
12. In 2013, President Barack Obama was recorded referring to Harris as the “best-looking attorney general in the country” but later apologized after critics labeled the comment as sexist.
13. In November 2016, Harris won her U.S Senate Seat when she defeated Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez with 20 years of experience thereby becoming just the second African American woman and the first South Asian American to enter the Senate.
14. She married Douglas Emhoff, a corporate lawyer on August 22, 2014, in Santa Barbara, California, and is the stepmother to his two children, Ella and Cole.
15. She made headlines in 2017 for her sharp questioning of then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions on the Russian investigation.
16. Harris announced she was running for president in 2020 during a Martin Luther King Jr. Day interview on Good Morning America on January 21, 2019.
17. She was seen as one of the leading contenders, and made headlines when, during a primary debate, she had confronted fellow candidate Joe Biden over his opposition to school busing in the 1970s and ’80s.
18. Her numbers briefly increased after the debate but by September 2019 her campaign was in serious trouble, and in December she dropped out of the race.
19. Harris published two books in early 2019: The Truths We Hold: An American Journey reflects on her personal relationships and upbringing, and Superheroes Are Everywhere, another memoir rendered in picture-book form for kids.
20. In August 2020 Biden chose Harris thus becoming the first Black woman and person of South Asian descent to appear on a major party’s national ticket.
As the wait continues for who will be the next President of the United States of America, one name that is on everyone’s lips is Kamala Harris.
