Kamala Harris – US vice president and favoured Biden successor
A look at how Kamala Harris came to be vice president, why she is being touted for the top job and what her reaction has been.
Joe Biden has backed his vice president Kamala Harris to take his place as the Democratic Party’s nominee for the presidential election.
Questions had been raised over Joe Biden’s fitness for office, and rumours had been circulating that the president’s campaign was “quietly assessing” whether Kamala Harris could take over from him.
After the president officially pulled out, Ms Harris said she was “honoured to have the president’s endorsement and my intention is to earn and win this nomination”.
“With this selfless and patriotic act, President Biden is doing what he has done throughout his life of service: putting the American people and our country above everything else,” Ms Harris said.
Here’s a look at how Ms Harris came to be vice president and why she is being touted for the top job.
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Before vice presidency
The 59-year-old was born and raised in Oakland, California by Jamaican father Donald Harris and Indian mother Shyamala Gopalan.
Her parents, both immigrants, were highly respected in their fields – her mother as a breast cancer scientist and father an economics professor.
They divorced when she was seven and she was raised with her sister Maya by their mother in Berkeley.
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Ms Harris says the pair took her to civil rights marches while she was “in a stroller,” growing her interest in law.
She went on to graduate from Howard University and the University of California Hastings College of Law.
She began her long career in law as a deputy district attorney between 1990 and 1998, specialising in prosecuting child sexual assault cases, but also working on homicide and robbery cases.
In 1998, Ms Harris was named managing attorney of a criminal unit at the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office before becoming head of the San Francisco City Attorney’s Division on Families and Children.
She became the first female district attorney for San Francisco in 2004. During her first three years in the position, the conviction rate in the city jumped from 52% to 67%.
She served for six years before being elected as attorney general of California, where she oversaw the largest state justice department in the country.
In 2016, she won the US Senate race in California, beating fellow Democrat Loretta Sanchez who had 20 years’ experience in Congress.
Here, she built a reputation around her work as a prosecutor and gained national attention during her forensic questioning of Trump administration officials including Jeff Sessions, and then Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.
She had become a prominent politician by the time she launched a campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in January 2019, going with the slogan “Kamala Harris for the People”.
Democrats saw her as a promising candidate to overthrow Donald Trump’s presidency in the 2020 election, but Ms Harris ultimately dropped out of the race in December 2019, blaming a lack of finances.
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Joe Biden selected her as his running mate in August 2021, describing her as a “fearless fighter for the little guy”.
It made her the first black female running mate for the two major parties, and only the third female running mate for the two major parties in American history.
‘We did it, Joe!’
When Ms Harris was sworn into office with Biden she became not only the first woman to serve as vice president, but also the first black person and person of South Asian descent to take on the role and highest-ranking woman ever to serve in the American government.
In a touching moment after it was revealed Mr Biden won the presidential election, she called him while out running.
“We did it,” she said. “We did it, Joe! You’re going to be the next president of the United States.”
In her first speech as vice-president elect, she spoke of the many women who made her achievement possible, personally and historically.
She thanked American voters for turning out in record numbers and vowed to “strive to be a vice president like Joe [Biden] was to President Obama – loyal, honest and prepared, waking up every day thinking of you and your family”.
“While I may be the first woman in this office, I will not be the last,” she said, in an apparent reference to something her late mother told her.
“My mother would look at me and she’d say, ‘Kamala, you may be the first to do many things, but make sure you are not the last,'” Ms Harris said in 2019.
As vice president, Ms Harris has rallied for abortion rights and been heavily focused on tackling the immigration crisis on the US-Mexico border.
How rumours of a presidential nominee bid became reality
It’s been a torrid time for president Biden of late, with the 81-year-old dealing with the aftermath of a disastrous debate against opponent former president Trump in June.
Ms Harris launched a staunch defence of the president mere minutes after the debate ended, admitting he had a “slow start” but saying he “pushed facts” while Donald Trump “pushed lies”.
Calls from within the president’s own party for him to resign became even louder after he mistakenly referred to Volodymyr Zelenskyy as “president Putin” at the NATO summit before referring to his vice-president as Donald Trump, rather than Ms Harris.
Polls suggested most Democrats thought the vice president would do well as Mr Biden’s successor and experts said she would have a head start over other potential successors, as she was already been on a winning presidential ticket with Mr Biden and has years of goodwill banked with core party constituencies.
Ms Harris side-stepped the drama and remained loyal to Mr Biden on the campaign trail right up until the president’s withdrawal announcement – though she had acknowledged how much was at stake, calling this “the most existential, consequential and important election of our lifetime”.
She had not entertained questions about a presidential bid, but in 2023 she did comment on whether she was ready to step on for Mr Biden if he became unable to serve.
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“Yes, I am, if necessary,” she told CBS, adding: “But Joe Biden is going to be fine. And let me tell you something: I work with Joe Biden every day.”
Mr Biden said in mid-July he felt Ms Harris was “qualified to be president”.
“That’s why I picked her,” he said in a press conference, adding he would not step aside for her unless polls suggested there was no way he could beat Mr Trump in November.
“No poll is saying that,” he concluded.
It was around a week later that Mr Biden announced he wouldn’t run again, backing his vice president to take his place as the Democratic Party’s nominee shortly after.
How Ms Harris responded to Mr Biden’s endorsement
The vice president took to X after Mr Biden’s announcement and said: “On behalf of the American people, I thank Joe Biden for his extraordinary leadership as President of the United States and for his decades of service to our country.
“I am honoured to have the president’s endorsement and my intention is to earn and win this nomination.
“I will do everything in my power to unite the Democratic Party – and unite our nation – to defeat Donald Trump and his extreme Project 2025 agenda.”
