Who Is Kamala Harris?

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris (59) looks likely to become the next Democratic presidential nominee for the 2024 elections, following incumbent President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw from the race. If she is chosen by the Democratic Party to run and were to succeed against the Republican nominee and former President Donald Trump, then she would become the first Black woman and first person of South Asian descent to govern the country.

Firsts are nothing new for Harris, who was also the first Black female district attorney for San Francisco, before becoming the first woman, the first Black American, and the first South Asian American to hold the office of attorney general of California. Harris is also the first Indian-American and the first Caribbean-American to have been elected to the Senate as well as the first Black female Senator from California. The daughter of immigrants, Harris’ parents both moved to the U.S. to study and to pursue their studies in academia; her father was from Jamaica and taught economics at Stanford, while her mother, from Chennai in India, became a cancer researcher.

During Harris’ time as district attorney, she spearheaded a program helping first-time drug offenders, according to the Biden Harris campaign website. As California’s attorney general though, Harris was often criticized for the lack of criminal justice reform taking place under her watch. Her office was criticized specifically for having been involved in trying to quell the release of prisoners from California prisons despite overcrowding, as well as her office having defended the use of the death penalty in California, despite personally standing against it.

As this chart shows, in 2019, Harris then vied for candidacy in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, but withdrew before the primaries. She was then selected as the running mate of Joe Biden, and in 2021 became the first woman, the first Black American as well as the first Asian American to fill the role of vice president in American history.

Harris has announced that she now aims to become the next Democratic presidential candidate. In terms of her stance on major issues, she supports Ukraine in the war against Russia, is an advocate for the rights of women to have abortions and has previously campaigned for tougher gun laws.