Previous vice presidents have found themselves suddenly in the driver’s seat after their bosses’ assassination, but Kamala Harris exists in a category of her own. She’s in the unusual situation of taking up the baton days after the attempted assassination of the president’s opponent.
For Harris, though, the net result is the same: Having been kept away from decision making and saddled with dead-end tasks — like every incumbent of the office — she’s now the likely Democratic candidate for president. With President Biden’s health a long-term item at least in conservative news, she’s not exactly Kamala Who? but neither has she fully taken shape for voters. Here are five things to know about Joe Biden’s anointed successor.
Born in California in 1964 to immigrant parents from India and Jamaica who were both academics, Kamala Harris was brought up first in Berkeley, where she was bused into a white suburb as part of a desegregation drive, and then in Montreal, Canada. Harris’s path to public office came via law. Appointed a deputy district attorney in California in 1990, she became San Francisco’s district attorney in 2002, having attracted support from local Senator Dianne Feinstein, who died in office last year. Her stint as California’s attorney general from 2011 until 2017 was a springboard for a successful bid for the Senate, followed by selection as Biden’s running mate in 2020.
Her marriage to Doug Emhoff, a Jewish lawyer, has long made liberal Jews misty-eyed about Harris. She played that up, noting that her stepchildren referred to her as “Mamala,” resulting in gushing profiles of the two. On the campaign trail, expect Emhoff to be deployed in the forefront of an effort to keep crucial Jewish voters onside
Create a free account to keep reading.
