Kamala Harris | Biography, Policies, Family, & Facts (2024)

Kamala Harris (born October 20, 1964, Oakland, California, U.S.) is the 49th vice president of the United States (2021– ) in the Democratic administration of Pres. Joe Biden. She is the first woman, the first Black American, and the first Asian American to hold the post. She had previously served in the U.S. Senate (2017–21) and as attorney general of California (2011–17). In July 2024, following his poor performance in a nationally televised debate with Republican candidate and former president Donald Trump, Biden abandoned his bid for reelection and endorsed Harris as the Democratic Party’s nominee in the presidential election of 2024. In early August, Harris was officially named the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee following her victory in a virtual vote of party delegates.

Early life and education

Donald J. Harris and Shyamala Gopalan met as students as part of a Black student group at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1962. Harris was an economics doctoral student from Jamaica; Gopalan came from India to study nutrition and endocrinology. Harris spoke; Gopalan, who wasn’t Black but was welcomed by the group as a person of color, was intrigued by what she heard. The two soon became something of a power couple in the civil rights movement on campus. They married in 1963, and their first daughter, Kamala, was born in 1964. Their second daughter, Maya, was born in 1967.

The marriage foundered, and the couple separated and were divorced in 1972. The children were raised largely by their mother but saw their father on weekends. While growing up, Kamala Harris maintained close contact with her Indian family and frequently traveled with her mother and sister to Chennai, the capital of the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu. She studied political science and economics at Howard University, a historically Black college. While there, she pledged to the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, one of the “Divine Nine” sororities and fraternities founded by Black students. She was also on the debate team and elected to the student council. After graduating from Howard in 1986, Harris earned a law degree (1989) from the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco (formerly known as Hastings College).

Harris often talks about the lessons she learned from her mother, who went on to become a cancer researcher. She died of breast cancer in 2009. “My mother would often say to me: ‘Kamala, [y]ou may be the first to do many things. Make sure you are not the last,’ ” Harris recalled in a Facebook post on Mother’s Day 2022.

Attorney general

After gaining a law degree, Harris worked as a deputy district attorney (1990–98) in Oakland, California, earning a reputation for toughness as she prosecuted cases of gang violence, drug trafficking, and sexual abuse. She rose through the ranks, becoming district attorney in 2004. In 2010 she was narrowly elected attorney general of California—winning by a margin of less than 1 percent—thus becoming the first woman and the first Black American to hold the post. After taking office the following year, she demonstrated political independence, rejecting, for example, pressure from the administration of Pres. Barack Obama for her to settle a nationwide lawsuit against mortgage lenders for unfair practices. Instead, she pressed California’s case and in 2012 won a judgment five times higher than that originally offered. Her refusal to defend Proposition 8 (2008), which banned same-sex marriage in the state, helped lead to its being overturned in 2013. Harris’s book, Smart on Crime (2009; cowritten with Joan O’C. Hamilton), was considered a model for dealing with the problem of criminal recidivism.

A rising national star

In 2012 Harris delivered a memorable address at the Democratic National Convention, raising her national profile. Widely considered a rising star within the party, she was recruited to run for the U.S. Senate seat held by Barbara Boxer, who was retiring. In early 2015 Harris declared her candidacy, and on the campaign trail she called for immigration and criminal-justice reform, an increase in the minimum wage, and protection of women’s reproductive rights. She easily won the 2016 election.

When she took office in January 2017, Harris became the first Indian American and only the second Black American woman in the Senate (the first being Carol Moseley Braun). She joined the Congressional Black Caucus as well as the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus. She also began serving on both the Select Committee on Intelligence and the Judiciary Committee, among other assignments. She became known for her prosecutorial style of addressing witnesses during hearings, which provoked criticism—and occasional interruptions—from Republican senators. In June she drew particular attention for her questioning of U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who was testifying before the intelligence committee on alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election; she had earlier called on him to resign.

Another notable exchange came during the 2018 confirmation hearing for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, in which she asked him about his position on Roe v. Wade, the ruling that granted women the right to have an abortion.

Harris: Can you think of any laws that give the government the power to make decisions about the male body?

Kavanaugh: I am not thinking of any right now.

“My name is pronounced ‘comma-la,’ like the punctuation mark.”

In January 2019 Harris published her memoir The Truths We Hold: An American Journey. Shortly thereafter Harris announced that she was seeking the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020. From the outset she was seen as one of the leading contenders, and she gained attention when, during a primary debate, she had a contentious exchange with fellow candidate Joe Biden over his opposition to school busing in the 1970s and ’80s, among other race-related topics. However, her campaign foundered as she faced questions about her strategy, her uneven performance as a campaigner, and criticism from more left-wing Democrats about her role as a prosecutor. By September 2019 her campaign was in serious trouble, and in December she dropped out of the race, the first of the top-tier candidates to do so.

She continued to maintain a high profile, notably becoming a leading advocate for social-justice reform following the May 2020 death of George Floyd, an African American who was murdered while in police custody. Her efforts silenced some who had criticized her tenure as attorney general, alleging that she had failed to investigate charges of police misconduct, including questionable shootings. Others, however, felt that her embrace of reform was a political maneuver to capitalize on increasing public support for social change.

As racial injustice became a major issue in the United States, many Democrats called on Biden, the party’s presumptive nominee, to select Black woman—a demographic that was seen as pivotal to his election chances—as his vice presidential running mate. In August Biden chose Harris, and she thus became the first Black woman to appear on a major party’s national ticket. In November she became the first Black woman to be elected vice president of the United States.

Throughout her political career, Harris has paid tribute to Black women who have paved the way for her success. She has frequently highlighted the career of Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman elected to Congress and the first Black candidate to seek a major party nomination for president, which Chisholm did in 1972. In a 2019 interview, Harris spoke with admiration of Chisholm: “She reminds me of one of the many sayings of my mother had…: ‘Don’t you let anybody tell you who you are. You tell them who you are.’ That was Shirley Chisholm, unbought, unbossed. And I stand, as so many of us do, on her shoulders.”

In the weeks after the election Trump and various other Republicans challenged the election results, claiming voter fraud. Although a number of lawsuits were filed, no evidence was provided to support the allegations, and the vast majority of the cases were dismissed. During this time Harris and Biden began the transition to a new administration, announcing an agenda and selecting staff. By early December all states had certified the election results, and the process then moved to Congress for final certification. Amid Trump’s repeated calls for Republicans to overturn the election, a group of Congress members, notably including Senators Josh Hawley (Missouri) and Ted Cruz (Texas), announced that they would challenge the electors of various states. Shortly after the proceedings began on January 6, 2021, a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol. It took several hours to secure the building, but Biden and Harris were eventually certified as the winners. She later denounced the siege—which many believed was incited by Trump—as “an assault on America’s democracy.” On January 18 she officially resigned from the Senate. Two days later, amid an incredible security presence, Harris was sworn in as vice president.

Role as vice president

As Biden’s vice president, Harris was tasked with addressing the root causes of increased migration from Latin America to the U.S. southern border, promoting national legislation to protect voting rights, and preserving women’s access to abortion, which was significantly limited in many states following the 2022 Supreme Court ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (see U.S. abortion rights by state). Harris became a vocal and effective advocate for the right to complete reproductive health care, including abortion. She continued that theme as part of Biden’s 2024 campaign, in which she frequently warned that reelecting Trump would further limit access to abortion care.

As president of the Senate, Harris cast the most tie-breaking votes in history, shattering a nearly 200-year-old record. When Biden dropped out of the 2024 race and announced his support for Harris, she responded by saying:

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 honored to have the President’s endorsem*nt and my intention is to earn and win this nomination.

Shortly after Biden announced his withdrawal, the Democratic National Committee approved a plan to officially nominate its presidential and vice-presidential candidates by a virtual vote of delegates in early August, well before the start of the party’s convention in Chicago later that month. The new nomination mechanism, which rendered the in-person roll call of convention delegates purely ceremonial, had been deemed necessary to ensure that Biden’s name would appear on the ballot in Ohio, which required that candidates be certified to state authorities by August 7. By the close of the virtual roll call on August 5, Harris had secured her presidential nomination with 99 percent of the votes of participating delegates. On August 6, her nomination was officially certified by the Democratic National Committee. She thus became the first Black woman and the first Asian American in U.S. history to win the presidential nomination of a major party.

Earlier that day, Harris announced that she had selected Tim Walz, the Democratic governor of Minnesota, as her vice-presidential running mate. Harris had vetted and interviewed various potential candidates, including Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona, during the preceding two weeks. Her time-pressured consideration exposed some divisions between moderate and progressive interest groups and activists in the Democratic Party, who publicly or privately lobbied for or against different vice-presidential contenders.

Personal life and name

Harris is married to Doug Emhoff, an entertainment and intellectual property lawyer. The two met in 2013 and were married the next year in a ceremony officiated by Harris’s sister, Maya. It was Harris’s first marriage and Emhoff’s second. Emhoff has two grown children, Ella and Cole, who call Harris “Momala.” When Harris was elected vice president, Emhoff became the first spouse to be referred to as “second gentleman,” as well as the first Jewish spouse of a president or vice president.

The pronunciation of Harris’s name became a topic of controversy as Trump repeatedly mispronounced it during the 2020 and 2024 campaigns. In her 2019 memoir, Harris wrote that her name means lotus flower, noting, “My name is pronounced ‘comma-la,’ like the punctuation mark.”