Kamala Harris is an American politician, Lawyer, and Author. She is currently serving as the 49th vice president of the United States since January 20, 2021, under the presidency of Joe Biden.
Harris is the first woman to hold one of the highest positions in the history of the United States. Previously, she was a senator for California, from 2017 to 2021. A member of the Democratic Party, she was Attorney General of California from 2011 to 2017, during Governor Jerry Brown’s term.
She is a candidate for the Democratic nomination for the presidential election of 2020. Joe Biden then chooses her to be his running mate as the Democratic running mate. The ticket went on to win the general election in November 2020.
On January 20, 2021, she became the first woman as well as the first African-American and Asian-American (Indo-American) to assume office as vice president of the United States.
Kamala Harris Age / Wiki
| Born | 20 October 1964, Oakland, California, United States |
| Full Name | Kamala Devi Harris |
| Age | 59 Years Old |
| Zodiac Sign | Libra |
| Education | Westmount High School in Westmount, Canada Howard University in Washington, D.C. United States University of California College of the Law, San Francisco, United States |
| Profession | Politician, Lawyer, and Author |
| Nationality | American |
| Religion | Christianity |
| Ethnicity | Jamaican American Ancestry |
| Husband |  Doug Emhoff (American Lawyer) |
| Children | Son: Cole Emhoff Daughter: Ella Emhoff |
| Parents | Father: Donald J. Harris Mother: Shyamala Gopalan |
| Siblings | Maya Harris (Sister) |
| Net Worth | $7 Million (As of 2023) |
Kamala Harris Height and Weight
| Height | 5 Feet 3 Inches 1.61 Meters 161 Centimeters |
| Weight | 70 Kilograms 154 Pounds |
| Hair Color | Brown |
| Eye Color | Dark Brown |
| Tattoo | No |
| Piercing | Yes |
| Body Measurements | 30-28-33 |
Kamala Harris Biography
Kamala Harris was born in Oakland, California, on October 20, 1964, as Kamala Devi Harris. Harris is the daughter of Donald J. Harris, economist and professor emeritus at Stanford University, originally from Jamaica, who came to the United States in 1961 to do a doctorate at the University of California at Berkeley.
Shyamala Gopalan, Harris’s mom, is a biologist and oncologist specialist in breast cancer, a native of Tamil Nadu in India, and came to the United States in 1960 to do a doctorate of endocrinology at the same university. She grew up in Oakland, California.
Her parents separated when she was seven, and Kamala lived in Montreal from 1976 to 1981, with her sister Maya Harris and her mother, the latter having obtained a position at the Jewish General Hospital and a teaching job at McGill University.
Harris grew up attending both a black Baptist church and a Hindu temple. She continued her primary studies in a French-speaking school, then began secondary studies in Canada at the high school in Westmount, Quebec, where she obtained a final diploma in 1981.
She returned to the United States in Washington, where she obtained a bachelor’s degree in political science at the University of Howard followed by a degree in Juris Doctor at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco. She joined the California Bar in 1990.
Kamala Harris Political Career
In 1990, Kamala Harris was hired as a deputy district attorney of Alameda County, where he was noted as “a skilled attorney who is making progress.” In 1994 California Assembly spokesman Willie Brown (who was having an affair with Harris) appointed her a member of the state Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board and later of the California Medical Assistance Commission.
Harris took a leave of absence from the work of an attorney to carry out these two new duties. In February 1998, San Francisco district attorney Terence Hallinan hired Harris as an assistant district attorney.
There, he became head of the Career Criminal Division, coordinating five more prosecutors, and followed cases of murder, housebreaking, robbery, and rape – especially cases that fall into the three-strikes law (literally “law of the three shots”, a law that provides for increased penalties for repeat offenses).
Harris is said to have conflicted with Hallinan’s assistant Darrell Salomon regarding Proposition 21, which would have offered prosecutors the option to try juvenile defendants before the Superior Court rather than before the juvenile courts.
Kamala Harris propagated against the measure and Salomon reacted by offloading the journalistic inquiries about Proposition 21 on Harris and giving her other assignments, a de facto downsizing of the job. Harris filed a complaint against Salomon and left.
In August 2000, Kamala Harris took up a new job at San Francisco City Hall, working for city attorney Louise Renne. Harris ran the Family and Children’s Services Division sponsoring cases of child maltreatment and neglect. Renne said of Harris: “She’s going to be the best DA (district attorney) this town has seen in many years.”
District Attorney of San Francisco
In 2003, she was elected District Attorney for San Francisco over Terence Hallinan and Bill Fazio, with 56% of the vote, becoming the first District Attorney of color in California and the first woman to hold that office in San Francisco. She promises never to ask for the death penalty and to plead for the “ three strikes ” only if they are crimes with violence.
Kamala Harris is leading an “energetic” campaign, assisted by ex-San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, California Senator Dianne Feinstein, writer and cartoonist Aaron McGruder, and comedians Eddie Griffin and Chris Rock. She tries to differentiate herself from Terence Hallinan by criticizing her record.
She says she left the latter’s prosecution because he was technologically incapable and “dysfunctional,” insisting on the “abysmal” conviction rate of 52% for serious crimes, despite a California average of 83%. She accuses Terence Hallinan of promoting people without merit in her prosecution and of hiding allegations of abuse in the prosecution.
She further claims that her prosecution is not doing enough to limit gun violence in the city, particularly in poor neighborhoods like Bayview or Tenderloin, and criticizes her propensity to accept sentence negotiations in domestic violence cases.
During the campaign, she is strongly criticized for her closeness to Willie Brown. In response, she tries to distance herself from the latter, affirming that his career is “behind him” and that she “owes him nothing”, while refusing “to conceive a campaign around a criticism” by Willie Brown.
In 2007, it was without opposition that she stood for a second term. A 2008 New York Times article listing women who might have the potential to become presidents of the United States included Harris, suggesting she had a reputation as a “tough fighter.”
California Attorney General
In November 2008, Harris announced that she would be a candidate for Attorney General (Attorney General) of the State of California. She received the support of Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, as well as Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi.
In the primary, she received 33.6 percent of the vote, the most of all candidates. In the general election, Harris faced Republican Steve Cooley, then Los Angeles prosecutor. In the end, she won the election with 46.1 percent of the vote, 0.8 percent more than her opponent.
She followed on January 3, 2011, Jerry Brown, who became governor. She was re-elected in 2014 and stayed on until January 2017. She was succeeded by Xavier Becerra. Harris was both California’s first female African-American and first Asian-American attorney general.
In September 2014 it was speculated that she was a candidate for Eric Holder to follow the Ministry of Justice (United States Attorney General). Ultimately, President Barack Obama appointed Loretta Lynch to this post. On November 4, 2014, Harris was re-elected against Republican Ronald Gold, winning 57.5 percent of the vote to 42.5 percent.
In 2015, she appealed against the verdict of a federal judge calling the decade-long imprisonment of a death row inmate a “cruel and unusual” punishment and declaring the death penalty unconstitutional. Following her election to the U.S. Senate, Harris stepped down as Attorney General of California on January 3, 2017.
With the approval of the state legislature, Governor Brown appointed Congressman Xavier Becerra to succeed her.
California Senator
After 24 years as Senator for California, Barbara Boxer (Democrat) announced her intention to retire from the U.S. Senate at the end of her term in 2016. Harris was the first to run as her possible successor and officially announced the launch of her campaign on January 13, 2015.
She was widely regarded as a top candidate right from the start of her campaign. At the California Convention in California in February 2016, Harris received almost 80% of the vote. Three months later, Gov. Jerry Brown approved her candidacy.
For the first time since 1914, no Republican participated in California’s Senate election, and in the November 2016 election, Harris defeated Democratic Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez by more than 60 percent of the vote. After her victory, she took a stand to protect immigrants from President Trump’s immigration-critical line.
In February, Harris spoke in opposition to President Trump’s election of Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education and Jeff Sessions as Attorney General. In April, she voted against the appointment of Neil Gorsuch to the United States Supreme Court.
She also served as the leader of Senate hearings in several cases regarding ambiguities in relation to President Donald Trump‘s government and staff, which garnered much media attention.
When her urgent hearing by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in June 2017, regarding his role in the dismissal of FBI Director James B. Comey, prompted the committee’s chairman, Senator Richard Burr, to interrupt her and ask her to show more respect for the respondent, it aroused also debate in the news media about whether his behavior was sexist and the assumption that Burr would not have treated a male Senate colleague in a similar way.
Harris was one of the politicians who was sent one of the letter bombs in October 2018.
Vice President
After Joe Biden was elected president of the United States in the 2020 election, Harris became vice president of the United States on January 20, 2021. She was the first female vice president of the United States, She is the highest-level elected official in US history, the first African-American, and the first Asian-American vice president.
She was also the first person of color to hold the position since Charles Curtis, a Native American, was vice president under Herbert Hoover from 1929 to 1933. She was also a person. third have non-European ancestors taking on one of the highest executive positions, after Curtis and former President Barack Obama.
Harris resigned as Senator on January 18, 2021, two days before being sworn in as vice president. Her first act as vice president was swearing in her replacement Alex Padilla and Georgia senators Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, who was elected in the 2021 Georgia senator elections.
Kamala Harris Quotes
- My mother had a saying: ‘Kamala, you may be the first to do many things, but make sure you’re not the last.’ – Kamala Harris
- No one should have to fear for their life because of their sexuality or the color of their skin. We must confront this hate. – Kamala Harris
- Anyone who claims to be a leader must speak like a leader. That means speaking with integrity and truth. – Kamala Harris
- The truth is that the vast majority of Americans are good, fair, and just, and they want their country to reflect those ideals. – Kamala Harris
- I want to use my position of leadership to help move along at a faster pace with what I believe and know the Obama administration wants to do around the urgency of climate change. – Kamala Harris
- The American dream belongs to all of us. – Kamala Harris
- I believe in that old adage that ‘as goes California, so goes the country.’ – Kamala Harris