Kamala Devi Harris was born on October 20, 1964, in Oakland, California. She was raised by her father Donald Harris, a Jamaican professor at Stanford University, and her mother Shyamala Gopalan Harris, an Indian cancer researcher. Harris went on to study economics and political science at Howard University in Washington, D.C. While she attended Howard, she also interned as a mailroom clerk for California Senator Alan Cranston. Harris graduated from Howard with a bachelor’s degree in 1986. She then attended UC Hastings in San Francisco, California until 1989, after earning a law degree.
In 1990, Harris began working as a deputy district attorney in Alameda County. Harris held her position in Alameda County until 1998 and had various duties over those eight years. In 1994, Harris was appointed to the state Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board. Shortly after she took on this role, Harris was appointed to the California Medical Assistance Commission. During her time serving as deputy district attorney, she prosecuted many cases involving sexual abuse, drug trafficking, and gang violence. After prosecuting so many cases of this type, Harris became known for her toughness.
Harris went on to serve as the managing attorney for the San Francisco Attorney’s Career Criminal Unit from 1998 to 2000. In 2000, she transferred to the Division on Families and Children at San Francisco City Hall. Harris stayed at the Division on Families and Children until 2003, when she announced her candidacy for district attorney general of San Francisco. Harris was elected as district attorney general in 2004 and was then re-elected in 2007, serving as San Francisco’s district attorney general until 2010.
In 2010, Harris announced that she was running for California’s attorney general. Harris ran against Los Angeles County District Attorney Steeve Cooley, narrowly winning the election by a margin of less than one percent. She took office in 2011 as California’s first woman and African American attorney general. In 2014, she ran for re-election and won, beating attorney Ronald Gold with 56% of the vote. Harris served as California’s attorney general from 2011 to 2017, and during those six years, she demonstrated political independence in this role. For example, Harris was pressured by the Obama administration to settle a nationwide lawsuit against mortgage lenders for unfair practices, but instead, she pressed California’s case and won a judgment five times higher than the original offer. Furthermore, Harris refused to defend California’s Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage in the state. Her refusal was a major factor that led to the overturning of this law in 2013.
Harris announced her candidacy for one of California’s senators in 2015. As she campaigned, she publicly voiced her support of immigration and criminal justice reform, the protection of women’s reproductive rights, and increasing the minimum wage. Harris ran against Representative Loretta Sanchez to fill the seat held by former Senator Barbara Boxer, who was retiring. In 2016, Harris beat Sanchez with 62% of the vote. Harris was elected to the United States Senate as a Democrat and she began her first term in January 2017. This was an especially historic moment because Harris was the first Indian American woman and the second African American woman to hold a position in the U.S. Senate. As a senator, Harris served on both the Select Committee on Intelligence and the Judiciary Committee. Harris was known for her prosecutorial style of interrogating witnesses during hearings, although Republicans often criticized her because of this. Harris drew particular attention to herself after questioning former U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions in June 2017. Harris had called on Sessions to resign before the hearings, for Sessions was testifying on alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
On January 21, 2019, Harris announced that she was running for the Democratic presidential nomination in the 2020 election. She dropped out of the race on December 3, 2019, and began to endorse Joe Biden on March 8, 2020. Biden then chose Harris as his running mate on August 11, 2020, making Harris the first Black woman on a major political party’s ticket. Biden and Harris were elected President and Vice President of the United States in November 2020. Harris is the United States’ first female vice president and also the highest-ranking female elected official in U.S. history. Additionally, Harris is the first African American and Asian American to hold her position.
