WASHINGTON — Vice President Kamala Harris, a daughter of immigrants who rose through the California political and law enforcement ranks to become the first female vice president in U.S. history, is poised to secure the Democratic presidential nomination on Monday.
More than four years after her first attempt at the presidency collapsed, Harris’ coronation as her party’s standard-bearer will cap a tumultuous and frenetic period for Democrats prompted by President Joe Biden’s disastrous June debate performance that shattered his own supporters’ confidence in his reelection prospects and spurred extraordinary intraparty warfare about whether he should stay in the race.
Just as soon as Biden abruptly ended his candidacy, Harris and her team worked rapidly to secure backing from the 1,976 party delegates needed to clinch the nomination in a formal roll call vote. She reached that marker at warp speed, with an Associated Press survey of delegates nationwide showing she locked down the necessary commitments a mere 32 hours after Biden’s announcement.
Harris' nomination will become official after a five-day round of online balloting by Democratic National Convention delegates ends on Monday night and the party announces the results. The party had long contemplated the early virtual roll call to ensure Biden would appear on the ballot in every state.
An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted after Biden withdrew found 46% of Americans have a favorable view of Harris, while a nearly identical share has an unfavorable view of her. But more Democrats say they are satisfied with her candidacy compared with that of Biden, energizing a party that had long been resigned to the 81-year-old Biden being its nominee against former President Donald Trump, a Republican they view as an existential threat.
Already Harris has telegraphed that she doesn’t plan to veer much from the themes and policies that framed Biden’s candidacy, such as democracy, gun violence prevention and abortion rights. But her delivery can be far fierier, particularly when she invokes her prosecutorial background to lambast Trump and his 34 felony convictions for falsifying business records in connection with a hush money scheme.
“Given that unique voice of a new generation, of a prosecutor and a woman when fundamental rights, especially reproductive rights, are on the line, it’s almost as if the stars have aligned for her at this moment in history,” said Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla of California, who was tapped to succeed Harris in the Senate when she became vice president.
A splash in Washington before a collapse in the 2020 primaries
Kamala Devi Harris was born Oct. 20, 1964, in Oakland, California, to Shyamala Gopalan, a breast cancer scientist who emigrated to the United States from India when she was 19 years old, and Stanford University emeritus professor Donald Harris, a naturalized U.S. citizen originally from Jamaica. Her parents’ advocacy for civil rights gave her what she described as a “stroller’s-eye view” of the movement.
She spent years as a prosecutor in the Bay Area before her elevation as the state’s attorney general in 2010 and then election as U.S. senator in 2016.
Harris arrived in Washington as a senator at the dawn of the volatile Trump era, quickly establishing herself as a reliable liberal opponent of the new president’s personnel and policies and fanning speculation about a presidential bid of her own. Securing a spot on the coveted Judiciary Committee gave her a national spotlight to interrogate prominent Trump nominees, such as now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
“I’m not able to be rushed this fast,” then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions said during a 2017 hearing as Harris repeatedly pressed him on potential conversations with Russian nationals. “It makes me nervous.”
Harris launched her 2020 presidential campaign with much promise, drawing parallels to former President Barack Obama and attracting more than 20,000 people to a kickoff rally in her hometown. But Harris withdrew from the primary race before the first nominating contest in Iowa, plagued by staff dissent that spilled out into the open and an inability to attract enough campaign cash.
Harris struggled to deliver a consistent pitch to Democratic voters and wobbled on key issues such as health care. She suggested she backed eliminating private insurance for a full government-run system — “Medicare for All” coverage — before releasing her own health care plan that preserved private insurance. Now, during her nascent general election campaign, Harris has already reversed some of her earlier, more liberal positions, such as a ban on fracking that she endorsed in 2019.
And while Harris tried to deploy her law enforcement background as an asset in her 2020 presidential campaign, it never attracted enough support in a party that couldn’t reconcile some of her past tough-on-crime positions at a time of heightened focus on police brutality.
Joining Biden's team — and an evolution as vice president
Still, Harris was at the top of the vice presidential shortlist when Biden was pondering his running mate, after his pledge in early 2020 that he would choose a Black woman as his No. 2. He was fond of Harris, who had forged a close friendship with his now-deceased son Beau, who had been Delaware's attorney general when she was in that job for California.
Her first months as vice president were far from smooth. Biden asked her to lead the administration’s diplomatic efforts with Central America on the root causes of migration to the United States, which triggered attacks from Republicans on border security and remains a political vulnerability. It didn’t help matters that Harris stumbled in big interviews, such as in a 2021 sit-down with NBC News’ Lester Holt when she responded dismissively that “I haven’t been to Europe” when the anchor noted that she hadn’t visited the U.S.-Mexico border.
For her first two years, Harris also was often tethered to Washington so she could break tie votes in the evenly divided Senate, which gave Democrats landmark wins on the climate and health care but also constrained opportunities for her to travel around the country and meet voters.
Her visibility became far more prominent after the 2022 Supreme Court ruling that dismantled Roe vs. Wade, as she became the chief spokesperson for the administration on abortion rights and was a more natural messenger than Biden, a lifelong Catholic who had in the past favored restrictions on the procedure. She is the first vice president to tour an abortion clinic and speaks about reproductive rights in the broader context of maternal health, especially for Black women.
Throughout her vice presidency, Harris has been careful to remain loyal to Biden while emphasizing that she would be ready to step in if needed. That dramatic transition began in late June after the first debate between Biden and Trump, where the president’s stumbles were so cataclysmic that he could never reverse the loss of confidence from other Democrats.
Headed to the top of the ticket
After Biden ended his candidacy July 21, he quickly endorsed Harris. And during the first two weeks of her 2024 presidential bid, enthusiasm among the Democratic base surged, with donations pouring in, scores of volunteers showing up at field offices and supporters swelling so much in numbers that event organizers have had to swap venues.
The Harris campaign now believes it has a renewed opportunity to compete in Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina and Georgia — states that Biden had started to abandon in favor of shoring up the so-called “blue wall” states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
“The country is able to see the Kamala Harris that we all know," said Bakari Sellers, who was a national co-chair of her 2020 campaign. "We really didn’t allow the country to see her” four years ago. Sellers said: “We had her in bubble wrap. What people are seeing now is that she’s real, she’s talented.”
Yet Democrats are anticipating that Harris' political honeymoon will wear off, and she is inevitably going to come under tougher scrutiny for Biden administration positions, the state of the economy and volatile situations abroad, particularly in the Middle East. Harris has also yet to answer extended questions from journalists nor sit down for a formal interview since she began her run.
The Trump campaign has been eager to define Harris as she continues to introduce herself to voters nationwide, releasing an ad blaming her for the high number of illegal crossings at the southern border during the Biden administration and dubbing her “Failed. Weak. Dangerously liberal.”
The Republican nominee's supporters have also derisively branded Harris as a diversity hire, while Trump himself has engaged in ugly racial attacks of his own, wrongly asserting that Harris had in the past only promoted her Indian heritage and only recently played up her Black identity.
His remarks are previewing a season of racist and sexist claims against the person who would be the first woman and the first person of South Asian heritage in the presidency.
“I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black and now she wants to be known as Black," Trump said while addressing the annual convention of the National Association of Black Journalists. "So, I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black?”
In her response, Harris called it “the same old show — the divisiveness and the disrespect” and said voters "deserve better.”
“The American people deserve a leader who tells the truth, a leader who does not respond with hostility and anger when confronted with the facts,” Harris said at a Sigma Gamma Rho sorority gathering in Houston. “We deserve a leader who understands that our differences do not divide us.”