Kamala Harris
Kamala Harris was Vice-President of the United States from 2021 to 2025, the first woman, first Black American and first person of South Asian descent to hold the office, and the Democratic nominee for president in 2024. Born in Oakland in 1964 to a Tamil Indian cancer researcher and a Jamaican economics professor who met in the civil rights movement, she was raised largely by her mother after they divorced, and spent her teens in Montreal. She attended Howard University and took a law degree at the University of California, Hastings. She became a prosecutor in Alameda County, then District Attorney of San Francisco in 2004, and Attorney General of California in 2011 — the first woman and first Black person in that post. Her prosecutorial record was contested from both directions. She refused to seek the death penalty for a man who killed a police officer, which cost her politically, and she declined to take positions on death-penalty repeal initiatives; she pursued a truancy programme that could jail parents; and she negotiated a national mortgage settlement worth about twenty billion dollars for California homeowners after the financial crisis. She entered the Senate in 2017 and became known for close questioning at judiciary hearings. Her presidential campaign collapsed before the 2020 primaries began, and Joe Biden chose her as running mate that August. As vice-president she was given migration diplomacy with Central America and voting rights legislation, both largely intractable, and cast a record thirty-three tie-breaking Senate votes. After Biden withdrew in July 2024 she became the nominee with about a hundred days to campaign, and lost every swing state to Donald Trump.
- Lived: 1964 CE – ?
- Nationality: American
- Roles: vice_president
