Thursday , December 26 2024

Who is Kamala Harris, who can become America's first woman president?

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Kamala Harris said in her statement on Sunday that she is honored to receive the President's support. Her intention is to get the Democratic presidential nomination and win the election. She said that she will unite the Democratic Party and the country to defeat Donald Trump. Harris said that we have 107 days, we will fight together and win.

US President Joe Biden on Sunday withdrew from the 2024 presidential race. He supported Vice President Kamala Harris as the candidate in his place. Biden recommended the name of Kamala Harris (59) of Indian-African origin at a time when Democratic Party leaders had been pressuring Biden to withdraw from the contest for the past several weeks after his poor performance in a debate with his Republican rival and former President of the country Donald Trump in late June.

Biden said in a post on X that I want to give Kamala Harris my full support and cooperation to become our party's candidate this year. It is time for the Democratic Party to unite and defeat Trump. Kamala Harris later said that she intends to get the nomination for the presidency.

Let us tell you that Kamala Harris is the first woman, first black and first Asian American to reach the post of Vice President. Now Biden's support can put her on the path to becoming the first woman President. So let's know who is Kamala Harris and how was her political journey.

Kamala Harris's Childhood

Harris was born in Oakland, California in 1964. Her mother Shyamala Gopalan was born in Chennai and was a cancer researcher. Her father Donald Harris was a Jamaican economist who immigrated to the United States. Harris's parents met while pursuing degrees at the University of California. Harris has a sister, Maya.

According to the White House, Harris's parents divorced when she was seven. However, Kamala Harris credited her mother for molding her and her sister in Indian and African American cultures while they were growing up. “My mother understood well that she was raising two black daughters. She was determined to make sure we grew up as confident, proud black women,” Harris wrote in her 2019 biography.

College and career

When Harris was 12, she moved to Canada with her mother and sister, and after high school in Quebec, she returned to the United States to study at Howard University. She earned a bachelor's degree in political science and economics and participated in several weeks of protests against apartheid in South Africa on the National Mall. She also participated in a 1983 sit-in at the Administration Building to protest the firing of the editor of the student newspaper.

After graduating from Howard, she earned a law degree from the University of California, Hastings, in 1989. She was admitted to the State Bar of California in 1990, after which she joined the Alameda County Prosecutor's Office in Oakland as an assistant district attorney prosecuting child sexual abuse cases.

Leadership of the San Francisco Attorney's Division

She went on to work for the San Francisco District Attorney's Office, where she prosecuted numerous serious serial offenders as the office's managing attorney for the Career Criminal Unit. She later led the San Francisco City Attorney's Family and Children's Division.

Harris ran for San Francisco district attorney in 2003. Her opponents questioned her acceptance of two state board positions. She was appointed by former California State Assembly Speaker and San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, with whom she had a previous relationship. Candidates in the race also raised doubts about whether she could impartially investigate Brown's mayoral administration.

However, in 2003 she won the election and became the first African American woman and South Asian American woman to hold the position in California. Seven years later, she was elected Attorney General of California for the second time.

California Attorney General

In 2010, Harris narrowly defeated Steve Cooley, the popular Republican prosecutor of Los Angeles County, to win the California Attorney General election. Harris opposed the death penalty as district attorney. She declined to prosecute death penalty cases in San Francisco, even a high-profile case involving the murder of a police officer, a decision that angered local police unions. But as attorney general, she also appealed a California court ruling that declared the death penalty unconstitutional.

In 2014, while serving as California's attorney general, Harris married lawyer Doug Emhoff in a small ceremony in Los Angeles presided over by her sister Maya. Emhoff's two children from a previous marriage, Ella and Cole, gave Harris the nickname Momala.

US Senate

In 2016, Harris ran for the U.S. Senate with the support of then-President Obama and then-Vice President Biden. She easily defeated another Senate candidate, Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D) of California, becoming the second Black woman to join the upper chamber.

During her tenure in the Senate, Harris distinguished herself by using her prosecutorial skills to question Trump's nominees and appointees during committee hearings.

2020 presidential race

In 2019, two years after being sworn into the Senate, Harris announced her bid for president. And during the first Democratic presidential primary debate, Harris' breakout moment came when she fell behind Biden.

Harris was seen as a rising female star in the Democratic Party, but struggled to gain consistent support in presidential polls. Harris dropped out of the presidential race in December 2019.

Vice President of America

In the summer of 2020, Biden announced he had chosen her as his running mate, fulfilling his promise to put a woman on the ticket. When Biden declared victory in November 2020, Harris became the first vice president to give a victory speech alongside the president-elect. Harris acknowledged she was doing something that no one like her had ever done before.

Democratic Party Candidate

At the same time, Biden has supported Harris to become the Democratic Party's candidate in his place in the 2024 presidential election. In his statement, Biden said that my first decision as the party's candidate in 2020 was to choose Kamala Harris as my vice president and this is the best decision I have ever made.