2020 race: VP nod the latest in career of firsts for Kamala Harris

Kamala Harris has been a trailblazer all her life.

Kamala Harris has been named by Joe Biden as his vice-presidential choice. Picture: AFP

Kamala Harris has been a trailblazer all her life.

“My mother used to have a saying,” the senator is fond of ­recounting. “She would say to me ‘You may be the first to do many things but make sure you’re not the last’.”

Harris was the first black ­attorney-general of California, the first woman to hold the post, and the first woman of South Asian heritage to be elected to the US Senate. She is now seeking to ­become the first female vice-president of the US.

And with Joe Biden, 77, ­expected to serve only a single term if elected, Harris would be favoured to win the Democratic presidential nomination in four years and a shot at becoming the first female president.

“Senator Harris is a tenacious and trailblazing leader who will make a great partner on the campaign trail,” said Susan Rice, who served as national security adviser under president Barack Obama and was also under consideration to be Biden’s running mate.

Since ending her White House run and endorsing Biden, Harris has stepped up her criticism of President Donald Trump on a host of issues: from his handling of the COVID-19 outbreak to race to immigration.

“Trump’s repeated racist rhetoric tries to place blame for his coronavirus failures on anyone but himself,” she tweeted recently.

“It’s dangerous and it’s wrong — and has real life consequences for Asian Americans and Asian immigrants.”

Harris’s own parents were immigrants — her father from ­Jamaica, her mother from India — and their lives and her own have in some ways embodied the American dream.

Harris was born on October 20, 1964, in Oakland, California.

Her father, Donald Harris, was an economics professor and her mother Shyamala Gopalan, was a breast cancer researcher. They separated when Harris was about five and she and her sister Maya were raised by her mother, who died in 2009.

Harris earned her law degree from the University of California, and became a prosecutor and served two terms as a district ­attorney in San Francisco.

She was elected attorney-general of California in 2010 and re-elected in 2014, the same year she married Douglas Emhoff, a lawyer with two children from a previous marriage.

As attorney-general, Harris ­developed a working relationship with Biden’s late son Beau, who held the same position in the state of Delaware. Beau Biden died of cancer in 2015.

Harris was elected to the Senate in November 2016, becoming just the second black female senator ever. As a senator, she has ­employed tough questioning skills honed as a prosecutor, notably during the Senate confirmation hearing of Supreme Court judge nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

Harris launched her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination on Martin Luther King Jr’s birthday in January last year at an event attended by 20,000 people in Oakland.

Her debate clash with Biden — over his opposition to 1970s bussing programs that forced integration of segregated schools — provided her with a breakout moment and a bump in the polls but it was to prove short-lived. Harris dropped out of the race in December and endorsed Biden in March.

AFP